It's the fact that the FAA has $5.2B in outstanding repairs but only $1.7B allocated for repair.
On top of that, the GS pay scale penalizes federal employees in high CoL areas.
Both are very difficult problems to solve, as the former means dramatically increasing the FAA's budget (which is tiny for the scope of responsibility it has across North America), and the latter means completely reforming the General Schedule.
On top of that, Congress constantly meddles with the FAA and DoT in general because it's the easiest way to get some quick wins for constituents.
The FAA has been working on modernizing air traffic control, but that project won't be completed til 2030 at the earliest.
Furthermore, the Northeast is a uniquely congested airspace with the massive number of airports and passengers.
The budgetary questions are unrelated to UX/UI stagnation though.
It's annoying how many modern web sites change their entire design framework once every two years, yes. But ATC? Aeronautics in general? Most of maritime? Once it's certified, it's practically ossified - and for good reason. Bad UI/UX can literally kill [1].
Nevertheless, I think it's worth having the debate - and that led by actual air traffic controllers, please - if and if yes, how, UX/UI can be improved.
On the hierarchy of needs, it's a much lower priority than actually investing in solving maintenance related problems that are the primary cause of the Newark ATC related issues.
I don't believe the user's primary complaint is the UI of their devices. Why should they take time out of their overworked schedules to have a debate they aren't already having?
Well for starters, perhaps an easier visual interface would increase interest among young people into considering ATC career. It's kind of like how the world is considering streamlining the medical fields and pairing AI with medical students and maintaining that pairing into their careers. The idea being that by modernizing the requirements, medical practice will become more appealing. Remember when calculators were banned in schoolS? Same is happening with careers which traditionally relied on mentally amassing large BOKs(body of knowledge).
Wrong.
It's the fact that the FAA has $5.2B in outstanding repairs but only $1.7B allocated for repair.
On top of that, the GS pay scale penalizes federal employees in high CoL areas.
Both are very difficult problems to solve, as the former means dramatically increasing the FAA's budget (which is tiny for the scope of responsibility it has across North America), and the latter means completely reforming the General Schedule.
On top of that, Congress constantly meddles with the FAA and DoT in general because it's the easiest way to get some quick wins for constituents.
The FAA has been working on modernizing air traffic control, but that project won't be completed til 2030 at the earliest.
Furthermore, the Northeast is a uniquely congested airspace with the massive number of airports and passengers.