Air Traffic Control: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
LastWeekTonight1 HN recommender · recommended in 1 month, 2025–2026
commentary · general · 2025–2026 on HN
John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment covers the working conditions of US air traffic controllers and the understaffing, outdated equipment (including floppy disks) and funding structure of the FAA. It mixes comedy with policy criticism.
HN links it in threads on FAA modernization and controller shortages as an entertaining but substantive summary of the problem.
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3 comments from Hacker News
I think people here may enjoy John Oliver's report on how bad the situation for air traffic controllers currently is. Jump to minute 18 for a discussion on floppy disks or, appropriately, to minute 25 for an "honest recruitment ad". ▶ this video
This is not news, there was an episode of Last Week Tonight on the Air Traffic Control crisis last summer[0]. From memory: on the human side airports are understaffed, there are no young controllers in the pipeline, attrition is high, and the less people are available the higher the burnout rate, which creates a vicious cycle. On the technical side, airports are unmaintained, systems are obsolete and crumbling. John Oliver makes the case that most of the issue is that the FAA is financed through discretionary spending so e.g. it's subject to shut downs and can't do long term planning. [0] ▶ this video
They are changing it for publicity reasons. It has nothing to do with whether or not it works. This whole thing is being done as a reaction to this video: ▶ this video The article completed skipped over this. This video was released literally a week ago and is completely mocking the FAA. Floppy disks are a big joke in this video.