[rcktmrtn]

> What's going on in control towers that's causing this? Did hiring standards for ATCs drop all of a sudden, or something like that?

There was a fairly major change recently [1]. Before 2014, the FAA used to be biased towards recruits that had been already trained in a program on someone else's dime (military or university). Perhaps their on-the-job training isn't quite good enough to compensate for that change yet.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_traffic_controller#2014_ch...