Air Traffic Controllers: FAA Seeks More Cutbacks at Expense of Safety

by Tula Connell, Oct 19, 2006

So, it’s not enough that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed a contract on air traffic controllers over the Labor Day weekend that the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) union says poses real and potentially dangerous consequences for the safety of airline passengers and crews.

In yet another misguided attempt to cut funding for critical services while throwing away taxpayer money on tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, Bush’s FAA now plans to eliminate on-site meteorologist positions at 21 traffic control centers across the nation. NATCA says cutting staff from these Center Weather Service Units would leave air traffic controllers without the ability to obtain and relay vital weather information in a timely manner to aircraft experiencing difficulty and would have an adverse effect on safety.

Says NATCA President Patrick Forrey:

We share the view of the National Weather Service Employees Organization that the elimination of the weather service units through centralization would be a major setback for aviation safety, with degraded service for en route traffic and elevated safety concerns for general aviation. There are numerous instances where lives have been saved by the rapid dissemination of accurate and timely weather information by weather service unit personnel…[W]e would like to see the FAA reverse its decision and maintain weather service unit personnel at each of our centers.

The FAA plans to contract with a commercial weather company to provide meteorological service from one remote centralized location. But NATCA does not believe that weather information provided from a remote, centralized location, can be obtained at the same speed as that provided on-site.

And in aviation, Forrey says, saving time means saving lives.

With weather service units in the facility, controllers have the face-to-face ability to brief with weather service unit personnel on items of interest with weather that changes minute-by-minute. You don’t have to try and get someone on a phone or teleconference and wait to see items brought up on the computer screen in front of you. This takes time when you have a fast moving and changing environment.

The weather service units were established by the FAA in 1978 as a result of a recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board, which determined that one of the major contributing factors in a Southern Airways DC-9 crash in New Hope, Ga., on April 4, 1977, was that the FAA lacked the ability to disseminate hazardous weather information to flight crews in real time. The FAA contracted with the National Weather Service to provide meteorologists to staff a newly established weather unit at each center.

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