Originally Posted by
TonyWilliams
One of the beauties of the ATC biz is that I was able to buy several airplanes over the decades, and had the money to actually fly them. I don't know of too many regional dudes flying around in a Baron.
But, ATC is never going to be nirvana. It is a guvment job, and the guvment is out of money. They are constantly trying to contract out ATC, so it can be just like other countries and to save money. Ask what happened to Flight Service when that was contracted out.... glad you did; they were pushed out of federal service, some literally DAYS from retirement in Oct 2006.
Also, sucking someone's posterior is a time honored method of "moving up" to the f-up/s-up crowd. There is no seniority for that.
Want to move to a different facility? Good luck. It does happen, of course, buy if you're at a critically staffed location, you'll never get out. Note: some places are perpetually short staffed. Your seniority won't help you to bid different facilities.
Thank you for the realistic side of this argument. There are obvious and numerous downsides that must be weighed against the downsides of an airline career. Though, let me ask you...from a controller's standpoint...while it seems obvious that many lower level facilities are in danger of being contracted out, do you ever see a future landscape where centers are farmed out like contract towers? The other argument of course is how is next gen going to affect staffing levels. One of my main reasons for wanting to be a controller is I won't have to worry about being furloughed if there's another terrorist attack or oil prices spike...but a certain captain I've flown with thinks there will be a massive controller furlough someday when the next gen system allows a single controller to work exponentially higher levels of traffic. Though, he also doesn't want to fly for FedEx or UPS because he thinks they'll all be operating as unmanned drones in 20 years, so...
I guess there's never really an answer to these types of questions though.