A near miss and other issues at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport

[MiTasol]

Nine weeks after the CRJ and Blackhawk collision and they are only now bringing in a stress management team to treat traumatised staff, and even then possibly only because of a combination of another near miss and a fight between a controller and another staff member.

The shrink team should have been there the day after the Jan 29 collision.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/04/02/us/stress-management-team-to-meet-with-controllers/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/28/us/delta-military-jet-close-call-dca/index.html

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/31/us/reagan-airport-air-traffic-controller-arrest/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

 

[Big Jake]

They won't need any of these teams if they'll just adequately staff the towers and control centers.

 

[MiTasol]

True to an extent but the chronic shortage of ATC staff goes back to the 1980s. The shrinks would still have been needed to treat staff with stress and burnout because it would have been far cheaper and faster to recover these members than train new ones plus recovering them means you now have an experienced person on the job instead of a newbe who has to be monitored until they get the required experience.

Spending almost half a mil training someone and then throwing them away when they get stressed is idiotic. Do not forget that ATC staff are like anyone else - it is not only the job that can stress them out. Divorce, illness/injury of a loved one, etc affect them just as much as they affect the rest of the working population, and much of the non working population as well.

Part of the problem was that all governments since then failed to provide the FAA the funds required to train sufficient numbers of new controllers.

Another part is that the FAA failed to prioritise ATC staff but then again the FAA also had a major shortage of aircraft and pilot/mechanic certification staff, regulation updating staff, and probably had a shortage in other areas less obvious as well.

Maybe the only way that the FAA would have been fully funded was to have a mid-air over Washington DC in the 80s or 90s.

 

[MiTasol]

To add to the above.

Air traffic controllers undergo similar or higher stress levels to pilots on the job and also work staggered hours like pilots. This should be offset by shorter hours, but is not because of the shortage of ATC staff.

In most countries airline pilots are restricted to 900 hours per year because the accident rate goes up dramatically after that.

As far as I am aware ATC staff are expected to work 2,000 hours per year like most other people.

Remember also that pilots are stressed by ensuring the safety of one plane load of people. At busy airports an ATC controller can be ensuring the safety of dozens of aircraft full of people at the same time.

Their stress levels, even on a good day, are far higher than people in 99.9% of jobs.

 

[GreenKnight121]

A woman I knew in the USMC (both myself and her) in the late 1980s was an ATC specialist, working at MCAS El Toro.

She was an avid RPG gamer (in-person AD&D), specifically as a complete break from her job.
She depended on the stress relief the gaming provided.

 

[Army14Bravo]

Hmmm. How the heck did we get through SE Asia in the 60's without a stress management team? As a life time pilot, I can appreciate that the ATC job is totally stressful. I am just amazed how there are now so many different teams for about anything that would bother a human being.

Please don't get mad at me. Just an old 87 year old vet grumbling.

Have a nice day guys

14B

 

[MiTasol]

I too am over 80 and grew up in the age when "men were men" but I have a slightly different take. I always thought it weird that servicemen in ww2 who had a mental breakdown were charged with "lack of moral fibre" and jailed. In ww1 it was called shell shock and they were often charged and even executed.

As a teenager the local volunteer ambulance was based in my fathers road works yard. If the dispatcher said it was critical dad would often wake me up to act as helper so that when the rest of the team arrived we were already on the job. I got to see many things that I hope my children and grandchildren never see. Seeing drivers who were drunk and driving with their arm out the window when they side swiped a bridge or vehicle or bank was not the worst by a long shot. I can tell you that telling them lies like "we've got you so you're going to be alright" when you know they are going to bleed out regardless of what you do is no fun.

The very last time I went on a meat wagon run was to a local teachers house five doors down. Mrs X was waiting at the door and tore dad a new one in front of me until he sent me home. Neither the teacher or his children attended school next day.

When I walked past the house next afternoon after school the place was totally empty. Dad refused to say what had happened but it eventually came out that the almost endless headaches he was known to be suffering from as a result of war injuries made him resort to a 12 gauge pain killer. The family was relocated to god knows where and none of us children ever heard of them again.

Had that teacher been assessed for what is now called PTSD and treated for it he may not have done that. That said in Aus the DVA are bloody useless. Australia has just had a Royal Commission into retired servicemen and women committing suicide and the number who do that when the DVA fail to help them is massive.

To me NOT fixing those who have suffered for their country is contemptible.

Also, to me, ATC controllers and others (firies, ambo's, etc) in extreme stress jobs who dedicate themselves to saving lives, deserve the best help we can give them.

 

[tyrodtom]

A local guy I went to school with, let's just call him David B, was one of the smarter guys in my class, but was from a dirt poor family.
He couldn't afford college, so the draft got him while I was away in the USAF.
Went to Nam of course.
When I got out of the AF, the summer I spent at home before joining the Army, I saw him a few times, tried to talk to him but he was not interested.
While I was away in the Army, I was told he went to the woods, and broke off all contact with his family, or anyone. Become a hermit in the woods. There are deep, remote woods locally, not hardly like out west, but deep thick brush and trees. I grew up around here, and used to hunt when I was young, with David, among other friends, I know and love camping, logging, etc.
According to people who have encountered him, he is hardly verbal, will not talk, doesn't run from people, just avoids them.

I'm 78, David is too. About 20 years ago my older brother, also a Vietnam vet, encountered him. Even though he's known David since he was a young boy, David did converse with him a little, but was plainly not at ease. Curtiss, my brother, told me he wanted to help him, but he couldn't find him for weeks at a time. Even his camps are hard to find, and he has several. They're all on other people's land, and some in the local national forest. Nobody knows how he survives, he out there year round probably. I've looked for him myself, but never found him just some of his old camps sites, possibly. I began to assume he had died out there and his remains would likely never be found, because they would be dispersed by wildlife.

I heard some rumors about 5-6 years ago that he's still out there.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Hmmm. How the heck did we get through SE Asia in the 60's without a stress management team?

14B

Pretty shitty. We got thrown out, after all.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

In ww1 it was called shell shock and they were often charged and even executed.

Forgive my interruption, but it's cued up to the pertinent point --


View: https://youtu.be/fpVtJNv4ZNM?t=16

Those ladies waving white feathers at guys who'd seen the elephant, WTF did they know outside of social mores? They had the leisure of soft language that never could convey what those poor guys experienced.

God damn, this irks me.

 

[MiTasol]

Dad talked about an incident where an amputee wearing civies was walking down the main street of a city (cant remember which one) with his AF mates when a woman walked up and abused him for being a coward. Apparently he pulled up his trouser leg so everyone could see his peg and then decked the bitch. The police refused to prosecute him.

 

[special ed]

In the late 60s or early 70s while V.N. was still active, I was making service calls in downtown New Orleans. This day, someone unloading some kind of gas containing 6 foot cylinders from a stake body truck at the other end of the block, dropped one which popped off loudly when it the concrete. At my end, I just had started across. when it happened. At the noise, a young man approaching me in a three piece suit with brief case and two constructions workers nearby ducked nearly to the ground. As the three raised up, they looked at each other and acknowledged with a big grin with out words. I knew why, but most other pedestrians took no notice.