Air Traffic Controllers

Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Metering arrival streams and reading standard clearances is bounded optimization that TBFM and DataComm already partially execute, but a 12 rather than a 6 reflects the shifts where a thunderstorm cell parks over the final, a Cessna goes NORDO, and you have to invent a plan for eight aircraft by voice in ninety seconds — work no current system sequences unaided.

Some physical or field component. The job is a scope, a landline, and a headset, which alone would put it near 3, but a 9 recognizes tower controllers still work visually out the cab windows in weather, physically pass strips, and cannot be remote — plus the medical, sleep, and rotating-shift constraints that tie the function to a specific body in a specific facility.

Licensed human required and personally liable. A 17 tracks the FAA CTO certificate and facility rating you cannot work a position without, the Class II medical, the fact that separation losses are logged against your operating initials and investigated by the NTSB and FAA, and that no algorithm can hold the certificate — the reason it isn't 20 is that ATO is a federal employer and the government, not you personally, absorbs civil damages under the FTCA.

Some relationship component. Pilots do not choose their controller and never learn your name, which caps this at 8; what earns those points is the working rapport inside the facility — the handoff coordination with the next sector, the D-side/R-side pairing, and the fact that pilots comply faster with a controller whose phraseology and timing they read as confident.

Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls. When two aircraft are converging and one crew reads back the wrong altitude, the call on who turns and how far is yours in the seconds you have, made under 7110.65 rules that tell you the minima but not the resolution — a 17 rather than 20 because those minima, LOAs, and standard emergency procedures do constrain the option set more than an ICU physician's.