From the USA to Australia and the Philippines and around the world, air traffic controllers are not afraid to speak out anymore. With near misses in the air and on the runway seemingly out of control, due to increased traffic and decreasing numbers of ATCOs, overstressed and exhausted controllers talk to the Press, raise the issue with decision makers and legislators and eventually the public. But the situation is not improving.
 
Many countries rely on the controllers' professionalism and sense of duty and press them to work overtime, to cover for the staff shortage. In addition, some controllers accept because they need the extra income. Governments and ANSPs find it cheaper to pay overtime than to train and employ more ATCOs and everyone was happy, until now.
 
In Australia sectors of airspace are left uncontrolled by ATC because controllers refused to work overtime to cover for sick colleagues and the issue has forced ICAO to intervene. In the USA, near misses are in the news almost every day and it's more or less the same everywhere. But response by governments has been slow and corrective action even slower. Safety, it seems, is just a word. What really matters is money.
 
The truth is that the balance between safety and profit has always been fragile. The aircraft industry has repeatedly ignored safety issues with aircraft design, on the basis that an actual air crash would be cheaper than grounding all the planes to patch them up. So they let them fly and hoped for the best. Planes crashed and people died because of this attitude. The aircraft industry survived.
 
With air traffic control it's different. At stake is not only a specific type of aircraft but the safety of the ATC system as a whole. Pilots must be able to trust air traffic controllers, and vice versa, for the system to work. This has been the foundation of the system since the beginning. Should pilots begin to distrust ATC, safety will be undermined even further. But if their mistrust is justified, who can blame them?
 
Technological innovations to improve the situation are promising but not very near. Training new controllers takes a couple of years on average. Imposing restrictions to reduce air traffic seems unlikely. Time is out and the possibility of ATC induced accidents is high. A veteran ATC supervisor said he had been through similar difficulties in the past. "No matter what we do or say", he added, "it always takes an accident for things to change."