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The day before, more than 150 flights passing through Sydney were delayed as the airport grappled with a lack of air traffic controllers, highlighting how just how delicate the rostering situation is.

While Sunday’s incident is under investigation – an air traffic controller and a tug driver were temporarily stood down for mandatory drug and alcohol testing – the issue has shone a spotlight on the severe staffing shortages of those in charge of managing air traffic, and takeoffs and landings.

‘Doing the work of two people’

While air traffic controllers are entitled to unlimited sick leave under their terms of employment, Scott Nugent, the president of the air traffic controllers’ union Civil Air, says the issue “is that we do not have enough controllers just to fill the base roster before we have any sick leave at all”.

“In practice, the only way you fill the roster is with overtime, and it relies on overtime just to do business as usual,” says Nugent.

The experienced air traffic controller says workers are getting to the point where they’ve done so much overtime that they’re exhausted. Some staff are working 10 days on and then having one day off.

“The reason you’ve seen these delays in the last week is because we increased the spacing between aircraft to maintain safety when we have less people,” he says.

“If you’re doing the work of two people, you can only take half as many planes.”

Much of the problem is tied to a pandemic-era program that incentivised a significant number of experienced staff to leave Airservices Australia, the commonwealth-owned organisation responsible for the management of the country’s skies, in 2021.

With most planes grounded due to pandemic restrictions, 140 employees aged 56 or older accepted a redundancy.

Soon after, the organisation embarked on a large recruitment drive but hirings have failed to keep up with demand.

Gaps in rosters

Despite the starting salary for a qualified air traffic controller post-training being $116,990 a year – an experienced supervisor can earn a base salary of almost $300,000 – Airservices has struggled with recruitment ever since the pandemic.

In February 2024, two air traffic controllers who didn’t show up for work at Sydney airport caused cascading flight delays and cancellations across the country. Airservices narrowly avoided a similar incident in September last year.

At the same time it has been trying to plug roster gaps, Airservices has been preparing for a once-in-a-generation transformation to a new flight-tracking computer system, as well as managing past allegations of workplace bullying.

A review into workplace culture, conducted by the former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick’s firm, found 27% of staff in 2023 had experienced bullying in the past 12 months, up from 23% in 2020.

From July 2022 to 2026, Airservices says it endorsed 245 controllers, most of whom qualified in 2025-2026. Over the same four-year period, 86 controllers left the organisation.

Airservices says it now has a record number of controllers across Australia. There were 985 controllers in December 2020 and 1,073 as of July this year, according to the organisation.

However, the organisation says the demands on its workforce have also grown significantly, citing the new Western Sydney airport and its recent takeover of the airspace at Ballina in northern New South Wales.

There still aren’t enough controllers at Sydney, Australia’s busiest airport.

Tough tests and training demands

A newly qualified controller can’t just fill the gap left by a retiring veteran.

After 18 months of training, a newly qualified controller may be able to work in one position at a Sydney tower, such as helping organise the taxiways around the domestic airport.

That person wouldn’t be qualified, for example, to work on the taxiways around the international airport, or runways, which require additional training, making newer employees less able to fill urgent vacancies.

Airservices acknowledges there’s a problem. It says training experienced controllers for Sydney airport is its “top priority” but it can’t say when it will have recruited a sufficient number.

It takes about two years to train a controller, and that’s only if someone can get past the initial screening, which includes a difficult online aptitude test as one of the first hurdles.

“Only a very, very small number of people get through the application process,” says Nugent. “We’re usually talking about 2,000 people who might apply, and you hire 15 of them.”

Additionally, applicants must move to Melbourne for the mandatory training. Only offering training at one location is seen as an impediment, because some applicants don’t want to relocate given there’s a risk they don’t pass.

Airservices says it is considering different training locations, and says it has a new simulator in Sydney. %!s()

In a press release, Pearl Abyss t recaps that Crimson Desert has had 17 major updates since its release on March 19. It also notes correctly that it has finished things like months-long roadmaps in a matter of weeks, the development team one of the speediest in the business.

Pearl Abyss has also confirmed that the game’s first true DLC will be here in 2026, which is imminent, given that we’re already in mid-August, and we only have ~3 months until 2027 (plus, even Crimson Desert will probably avoid GTA VI’s release date). We did not get any details about what this DLC may contain, but given what the free updates have brought, it is likely to be substantive.

There is also confirmation that a Switch 2 version is coming, and that is targeted for a first-half of 2027 release. Perhaps the most significant news, however, is that Pearl Abyss is treating Crimson Desert as a huge new IP, and that includes expanding the game into multiplayer, an interesting addition, given how highly praised it was for its expansive single-player experience. But Pearl Abyss says that is harder than it looks:

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"Given Crimson Desert’s dynamic action combat and expansive open-world structure, there is significant potential for expansion into multiplayer modes," Pearl Abyss remarked. "However, integrating multiplayer functionality is far more complex than simply adding a new game mode; it represents a major technical initiative that requires comprehensive evaluation of server architecture, game balance, cross-platform stability, and live service operation models.”

"Accordingly, we are currently conducting extensive research from both technical and gameplay perspectives. Our overarching goal is to extend how users engage with the Crimson Desert IP over the long term, and we will share further details through our official channels as our plans materialise."

I’ve already seen some headlines talk about Crimson Desert trying to become a “ive service, given one of the lines in there, but I believe that’s a misinterpretation. It’s just talking about how its live updates are implemented, such as the 17 they’ve added before, for instance. No, I do not think we are getting seasons, battle passes and a cash shop in Crimson Desert here.

It is full steam ahead for Pearl Abyss and Crimson Desert. Chatter about the game may have faded somewhat recently, but that’s about to change with new DLC and whatever else may be planned.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy. %!s()

The legendary TV-show creator and hall-of-fame doomsayer would have undoubtedly dug The End of Oak Street, writer-director David Robert Mitchell’s contribution to the creatures-run-amok genre — it operates on a distinctly Twilight Zone-type of logic. Serling isn’t the primary influence hovering over this metaphor-friendly tale of the painfully ordinary disrupted by “Holy shit!” levels of extraordinary, however. It exists within a more modern shadow than Cold War paranoia and Eisenhower-era conformity, paying tribute to a different type of pop-culture giant. Mitchell isn’t trying to nudge viewers into another dimension, not only of sight and sound but of mind. He’s aiming for resurrecting the glory days of 1980s summer blockbusters, a close encounter of the vintage Amblin Entertainment kind. It’s easily the best homage-slash-rip-off of a Spielberg movie in ages.

Welcome to Oak Street, located squarely in Everysuburb USA, circa 1982. The annual summer block party, complete with sack races and grilled hot dogs, is in full swing. Among the participants are the Pratts, a picture-perfect American family provided you don’t notice the fraying edges on the periphery. Greg (Ewan McGregor) has to excuse himself from the festivities early to deliver a pizza; he’s been taking on side hustles to help make ends meet, especially because his brainy, snarky daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) has her eye on going to Cornell. Not even regular nips from a hidden bottle of whiskey in the garage can ease Greg’s self-loathing. His son, Brian (Christian Convery), is officially entering his early-teen rebellion phase. He has one eye on the new girl in town named Jeanette (Jordan Alexa Davis) and his other on constant lookout for the town bruiser, who’s issued an all-points beatdown bulletin on Brian after some shenanigans involving the guy’s brother.

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And then there is Denise Platt (Anne Hathaway, adding to what’s already been a banner year). She’s losing her patience with her passive-to-a-fault husband who, in her words, has a tendency to pretend problems simply don’t exist. Denise has written a novel in secret, about a frustrated housewife itching to leave her husband and kids for a rich, fulfilling life in New York. It’s fiction, she insists, fooling nobody but herself. This would-be bestselling author has shared her manuscript with a retired book editor down the block. She thinks Denise has a shot at getting it published. Meanwhile, the high-strung guy next door is haranguing her about their dog, and threatens to kill the pooch if it keeps pooping on his lawn. She can’t even summon the energy to be polite anymore. You’d say she was a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, minus the “verge” part.

The Pratts are in serious crisis, besieged by bullies and bad neighbors outside of their house and foundation-crumbling dysfunction inside it. So when odd occurrences like, say, the mysterious appearance of a plant that’s technically been extinct for 200 million years, or a massive, one-ton pile of dung showing up in the neighbor’s backyard — something chalked up to either a karmic prank or the dog seriously needing to change up his diet — no one really has the bandwidth to pay much attention. Then there’s a seismic rumble and a flash of blinding light in the middle of the night. Soon, the Pratts and their fellow Oak Street residents find themselves dealing with a plague of dinosaurs turning cul-de-sacs into killing grounds. Who has time to deal with the elephant in the room when you have to reckon with a T. rex snapping its blood-stained jaws at your front door?

This is the Jurassic lark that the movie uses to test its suburbanites, one in which the why of it all (there are a few cursory mentions of wormholes and Carl Sagan is name-dropped) is way less important than the way this family bonds over a major, inexplicable catastrophe. Your entire neighborhood has been unceremoniously transported back to a nightmare Flintstones scenario — time to circle around your loved ones and hone those long-dormant survivalist skills, folks! It turns out that maybe Dad can be good in a pinch, and Mom’s knack for compartmentalization sure comes in handy when trapped in a house filled with prehistoric alligators.

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It should surprise no one that, like her character, Hathaway is the linchpin of The End of Oak Street, pirouetting from exasperation to affection to hysteria to steeliness in a way that would inspire a fist-bump from The Odyssey’s Penelope. Few contemporary A-list actors give better scared face than her, and as with her psychologically fraught pop star in Mother Mary, there’s a physicality to her action-mom turn here that’s thrilling to watch. Hathaway is in a serious groove right now, and we’re lucky to have her gracing so many screens over the past six months — though not as lucky as Mitchell is to have her anchoring his own personal experiment in time traveling.

Because the filmmaker is less interested in the prehistoric age of rampaging predators than the golden age of multiplex moviegoing, when blockbusters felt compelled to lace their spectacles with humanity and understood the delayed-gratification thrill of tension and release. Everything from the conspicuously faded visual palette — all the better to conjure up that spirit-of-’82 feeling, my dear — to the Jaws-to-Jurassic Park method of withholding the monsters as long as possible reeks of a bygone era of Spielbergmania. Though to be fair, even His Steveness wouldn’t be so cheeky as to have his heroes stumble across two huge dinos fucking against a house.

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There’s a heavy dose of hero worship on display here, not just from Mitchell but producer J.J. Abrams as well; you can practically hear their we’re-not-worthy genuflecting mixed into the ambient background noise. But there’s also an attempt to channel the sensation they had as kids of being wowed by big studio tentpoles with a human touch. And a very human sense of complexity: Everyone remembers the eye-popping mother ship connection at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Fewer people recall the disturbing “crybaby” sequence. The people behind this flashback do, however, and their tribute is filled with those kind of raw, emotional, rough-edged moments in between full-on dino carnage.

If you’ve been following David Robert Mitchell’s career, it’s easy to see bits of his odds-and-sods previous work poking out of this grab for the OG-blockbuster brass ring. There’s the palpable sense of lived-in suburban life from his 2010 coming-of-age debut, The Myth of the American Sleepover. There’s the forward momentum and understanding of composing the frame for maximum effect that he displayed in his 2014 breakthrough It Follows. (Though by the time the 99th split-diopter shot shows up during a family conversation, you realize he maybe loves this filmmaking trick not wisely but too well?) And there’s the feeling that true weirdness is always just one lysergic layer below reality that characterized his 2018 cult classic Under the Silver Lake. The fact that he’s combined all of those elements and still hits the right notes for this karaoke take on yesteryear’s summertime entertainment makes this feel like more than cheap nostalgia. It’s not a question of whether or not they make ’em like this anymore. You’re just stoked they were able to make something like this at all right now. %!s()

But for some, this process can malfunction. Preoccupation with these rewarding stimuli can lead to disorders of substance overuse, including overeating to the point of obesity and alcohol abuse.

Studies going back to the 1970s have linked vivid mental imagery with drug abuse.

Understanding this link between craving and consuming is central to understanding addiction. This has eluded neuroscience for decades, but the introduction of a new class of drugs for weight loss may have given us just the lever we need to understand it.

These new drugs – including Ozempic and Wegovy – mimic the GLP-1 hormone to stimulate insulin release, slow digestion, and increase feelings of fullness. They are known as GLP-1 agonists and were originally used to treat type 2 diabetes because they help control blood sugar.

As a side effect, people using these drugs also lost a lot of weight, in some cases almost as much as might be expected from bariatric surgery.

But there is another less well publicised effect. Human studies show that GLP-1 agonists reduce alcohol consumption. Preclinical animal studies suggest these drugs also reduce the use of cocaine, amphetamines, opiates and nicotine.

These drugs are changing how we think about the brain’s reward system. They may also open new treatment options for obesity, alcohol dependence and the consumption of other addictive substances.

How the brain regulates reward stimuli

We have a reasonable understanding of the brain’s “reward circuitry” associated with regions that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine.

These brain parts – the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens (NAc) – have been the subject of research on reward for decades. They are the obvious candidate regions to look for a mechanism for GLP-1 action in the brain. But they lack significant density of receptors for GLP-1 and are unlikely to be the direct mechanism.

We must, therefore, consider other brain regions to understand the anti-consumption effect of GLP-1 drugs.

One jump “upstream” from the dopamine-producing brain parts is a region called the lateral septum. This brain structure has been historically implicated in emotional regulation.

Back in 1953, pioneering US behavioural researchers Joseph Brady and Walle Nauta coined the term “septal rage” when animals with damage in the lateral septum showed increased aggression, while direct stimulation of this brain region reduced aggression.

Much more recent work has placed the lateral septum at the center of a neural connectivity network. This has reframed how we think about its function.

While a link between the lateral septum and another region called the hypothalamus is probably responsible for septal rage, the lateral septum links with many other regions with various functions.

The brain’s reward control center

The lateral septum inherits much of its primary input from a brain region called the hippocampus.

This region is well known as the place that lets us form long-term “episodic memories.” A famous case of hippocampal damage, Henry Molaison (patient HM), was unable to form new memories after his surgery for epilepsy. He effectively lived without a past, in permanent present tense.

The hippocampus also contains the remarkable “place cells” – neurons that fire corresponding to a person’s thoughts about their position in space and, as recent research has shown, time.

This “where and when am I” information gets forwarded to the lateral septum. Key research has recently shown the lateral septum also contains place cells, but these cells strongly respond to rewards. They effectively add “what is good in this place” to the “where and when am I” information from the hippocampus.

Critically, the lateral septum shares this information with the dopamine-producing regions we would normally associate with reward.

Neuroscientists now think of the lateral septum as the brain region that lets us “think about” rewards – our conscious perception of them – and communicates with the machinery in the brain’s reward system that produces dopamine to make us feel good about them.

There is one last reason to suspect the lateral septum as the mechanism behind the anti-consumption effect of GLP-1 agonists. It is absolutely loaded with GLP-1 receptors.

Emerging research points to this as the mechanism. GLP-1 activation directly in the lateral septum has recently been shown to reduce food consumption in mice. Earlier this year, another study showed the same for alcohol consumption.

My own lab has shown this year that GLP-1 drugs reduce a type of activity in the lateral septum that may prevent it communicating so effectively with other brain regions.

These findings are reshaping our understanding of how the brain processes rewards and have put the spotlight firmly on the lateral septum as the home of cravings. %!s()

As a reminder of the vehicle that started it all, Chrysler invited us to load up our family for a summer road trip in the latest example in the minivan lineage, the updated 2027 Pacifica. There hasn’t been much new since its last facelift for the 2021 model year, which followed the launch of the van for 2017.

For 2027, the Pacifica gets another mild overhaul, with the most noticeable element a new Chrysler badge and front-end lighting. In place of the winged emblem is a logo that looks more like a couple of lines from a designer’s sketch, the same marking that’s appeared on recent Chrysler concept cars. In front, this new branding is illuminated and comes with new headlights that have substantially improved reach and a wider beam pattern. That is, unless you opt for the new base LX trim, which starts at $43,490, keeps the old nose, and replaces the previous Chrysler Voyager model. The 2027 Pacifica also gets new wheel designs and a couple of new features, including a camera feed of the blind-spot area. Activated with the turn signal, the feature is part of the $395 Safety Sphere package on Limited models such as our test van. (The package costs more on the lower Select trim.) Our van didn’t have the dual-screen rear-seat entertainment option, which is now available only on the top Pinnacle trim.

Road Trip Away

We loaded my family of five into a bright-red Limited model, second only to the Pinnacle, and rendezvoused in Stowe, Vermont. Our vehicle had the $2995 all-wheel-drive option—a feature added for 2021, and something that’s still not ubiquitous among minivans—and just about every other option too, bringing the price to $56,365. The Pinnacle gets a new blue-leather interior, but the Limited soldiers on with the same all-black carryover interior that consists of just-okay materials and no two-tone option to dress things up.

As we explored the lush Vermont countryside—traveling through charming towns and across covered bridges, sampling maple syrup, and stopping at the Ben & Jerry’s creamery and the von Trapp Family Lodge—my kids praised the second-row heated seats but complained that there are cupholders and a USB port only on the passenger’s side of the third row. Under the other side is a built-in vacuum, available on Limited trims and standard on Pinnacle. It’s a handy feature in a great location for quick access to tidy up the rear seating area. The canister where the detritus piles up is behind a panel in the cargo area, where the optional spare tire used to live (it got nixed with the 2022 models). However, self-sealing tires are somewhat of a salve for fears of being stranded.

HIGHS: Pleasant driving manners, fold-into-the-floor second-row seats, hushed cabin.

The Stow ’n Go second-row seats that fold into the floor are still a standout feature found only on the Pacifica. If you regularly haul large items, they’re a must-have, and when the seats are up, those large underfloor bins are great additional stash space. However, there are a couple of trade-offs: The second-row buckets have firmer cushions, a lower seating height, and less lateral support than in other minivans. And there’s no fore-and-aft adjustability either. But my teenage daughters had no beef with seat comfort.

The Pacifica’s infotainment and climate controls are sometimes laggy, especially right after start-up, but standard wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are fantastic tools for all your navigating needs. We used Google Maps and Waze to make our way to the Maine coast for a lobster roll at Barnacle Billy’s in Ogunquit before pointing the Pacifica back west toward C/D headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where we ran it through the usual test regimen.

Accelerating to 60 mph in 8.2 seconds puts the Pacifica at the back of today’s minivan pack. If that’s important, know that in our experience the front-drive variants have been nearly a second quicker to 60 mph, which is closer to the class average, and a difference that isn’t explained completely by the all-wheel-drive system’s 350-pound weight penalty. When driving more gently, you often have to give the Pacifica’s throttle a boot to trigger sufficient downshifts to wake up the gruff 287-hp 3.6-liter V-6, which is not unusual in the efficiency-optimized times we live in. Speaking of the Pentastar V-6, it’s the only powertrain now that Chrysler retired the plug-in hybrid variant.

Lots of Kids + Lots of Stuff + Lots of Miles = No Problem

A number that may be more important to more buyers is the excellent 66 decibels and 22 sones we measured at a 70-mph cruise. That is seriously quiet for a vehicle this large, among the quietest in the minivan set, and in fact more hushed than what we’ve found in some blue-chip luxury nameplates, such as the Mercedes E-class.

LOWS: Behind the pack in terms of acceleration, AWD option hurts fuel economy, folding second-row seats exact some trade-offs in comfort.

During 1200-plus miles of family hauling with many fill-ups, we couldn’t help but notice the fuel gauge is a bit shifty. It doesn’t budge for the first 100 miles or so, but the second hundred burns an indicated half tank. Overall, we averaged 22 mpg, which is at least a few-mpg penalty relative to the front-drive model. Back when we spent 40,000 miles with a front-drive 2017 Pacifica, we often got nearly 30 mpg on road trips. Although, on our 75-mph highway fuel-economy test, this all-wheel-drive Pacifica managed 27 mpg, beating its EPA highway figure by 2 mpg. Still, we’d recommend skipping the all-wheel drive and switching to winter tires during snowy months if you live in an area where you need them.

Overall, though, even 10 years into this generation, the Pacifica still has the family-hauling goods, plus a few tricks not found anywhere else. The steering and brakes are nicely linear, and the ride quality is excellent, even on these largest-available 20-inch wheels and tires. The big question, one that Chrysler and Dodge CEO Matt McAlear wouldn’t give us a clear answer to, is when to expect an all-new Pacifica. But it can’t be too far off.

VERDICT: The inventor of the minivan still makes a compelling one.

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Specifications

Specifications

2027 Chrysler Pacifica Limited AWD
Vehicle Type: front-engine, all-wheel-drive, 7-passenger, 4-door van

PRICE
Base/As Tested: $52,985/$56,365
Options: Family Tech Group (19-speaker Harman/Kardon stereo, built-in vacuum, interior camera, second- and third-row window shades, 120-volt outlet), $1495; 20-inch wheels and tires, $995; Red Hot paint, $495; Safety Sphere (surround-view camera, blind-spot view, front and rear parking assist with automatic braking), $395

ENGINE
DOHC 24-valve V-6, aluminum block and heads, port fuel injection
Displacement: 220 in3, 3605 cm3
Power: 287 hp @ 6400 rpm
Torque: 262 lb-ft @ 4000 rpm

TRANSMISSION
9-speed automatic

CHASSIS
Suspension, F/R: struts/multilink
Brakes, F/R: 13.8-in vented disc/13.3-in disc
Tires: Pirelli P Zero All Season
245/50R-20 102V M+S Seal Inside

DIMENSIONS
Wheelbase: 121.6 in
Length: 204.3 in
Width: 79.6 in
Height: 70.7 in
Passenger Volume, F/M/R: 58/54/47 ft3
Cargo Volume, Behind F/M/R: 141/88/32 ft3
Curb Weight: 4883 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS
60 mph: 8.2 sec
1/4-Mile: 16.4 sec @ 87 mph
100 mph: 22.5 sec
Results above omit 1-ft rollout of 0.4 sec.
Rolling Start, 5–60 mph: 8.5 sec
Top Gear, 30–50 mph: 4.2 sec
Top Gear, 50–70 mph: 6.2 sec
Top Speed (gov ltd): 111 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 185 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft Skidpad: 0.78 g

Interior Sound
Idle: 3 dBA/22 sone
Full Throttle: 75 dBA
70-mph Cruising: 66 dBA/22 sone

C/D FUEL ECONOMY
Observed: 22 mpg
75-mph Highway Driving: 27 mpg
75-mph Highway Range: 510 mi

EPA FUEL ECONOMY
Combined/City/Highway: 20/17/25 mpg

C/D TESTING EXPLAINED

Dave VanderWerp has spent more than 20 years in the automotive industry, in varied roles from engineering to product consulting, and now leading Car and Driver's vehicle-testing efforts. Dave got his very lucky start at C/D by happening to submit an unsolicited resume at just the right time to land a part-time road warrior job when he was a student at the University of Michigan, where he immediately became enthralled with the world of automotive journalism. %!s()