After FAA Cuts, How Safe Are Our Skies?

by Tula Connell, Dec 19, 2006

Over the past few years, the Bush administration’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) repeatedly has cut staffing at air traffic control towers and decreased the amount of time between work shifts, forcing controllers to work even when they have not had sufficient rest. Over the Labor Day weekend, the FAA unilaterally imposed a contract on air traffic controllers 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 a special report, Gannett News Service looks at the implications of these FAA moves for passenger safety.

Among the findings of the report, “Troubled towers: How safe are our skies?”: 

• Nearly 1,100 fewer air traffic controllers are working in U.S. facilities than three years ago, despite increasing air traffic.
• The number of controllers who chose to retire exceeded the FAA’s expectations for the third year in a row. About 70 percent of the FAA’s controllers will become eligible to retire through 2015.
• Short staffing is causing some controllers to work 10-hour days and six-day weeks periodically, increasing the possibility of mistakes due to fatigue, according to the union.
• Mistakes made by controllers rose by 68 percent between 1998 and 2005, according to FAA data.

Read the full report here.

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