Crisis in the Skies: FAA Policies Jeopardizing Passenger Safety

by Mike Hall, Mar 22, 2007

Here’s some scary information if you plan to get on a plane anytime soon. An investigation by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) has uncovered violations of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) order that two air traffic controllers work the midnight shift at air traffic facilities with a combined radar approach control and tower with radar facilities.

The OIG reviewed 62 of the nation’s 138 facilities in this category. Its report, issued March 17, found that “11.1 percent of the 23,002 total of  midnight shifts” at the sampled facilities “were staffed with only one controller” during the one-year period surveyed.

That understaffing—between Aug. 28, 2005 and Sept. 2, 2006—violates an FAA rule that requires at least two controllers on duty at facilities with both radar and tower functions.The OIG investigation found that in August 2005, after a near collision incident at Raleigh-Durham (N.C.) International Airport when just a single controller was on duty, the FAA issued verbal guidance reiterating that during midnight shifts at such facilities, two controllers should normally be on duty performing the two separate responsibilities.

The OIG concluded that “the FAA had no controls in place to ensure that facilities had consistently implemented the verbal guidance and were uniformly complying with it.” For example, the OIG “found that even though two controllers may have been scheduled on a midnight shift, there were no assurances that they were both on position.”

This was the situation when a commuter jet crashed on Aug. 27, 2006,  killing 49 people at Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport in Kentucky, where just one controller was on duty, and the incident that prompted the OIG’s investigation. Says Pat Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA):

The IG’s report very clearly confirms that it took a disaster for the FAA to get around to making sure its facilities were complying with its own order on proper staffing. The urgency with which the agency acted after the crash to ensure proper midnight shift staffing should have been done immediately after the Raleigh-Durham incident in 2005. That was the time to act. Not after people lost their lives. That’s too late.

Today in wide-ranging testimony before the House aviation subcommittee, Forrey detailed the staffing crisis, air traffic control modernization, the impact of the FAA’s implementation of new work rules and the agency’s refusal to collaborate with workers and their unions to address serious problems and the FAA reauthorization bill. He says the bargaining table is the place to start to find answers (click here to read his entire testimony).

NATCA believes that the quickest solution to this safety-related staffing crisis is to require the FAA to return to the bargaining table with its employees We would like to return to the contract negotiating table with the FAA and fix this critical problem immediately before the margin of safety in our beloved National Airspace System is further compromised. I believe this will decelerate the attrition levels we are currently seeing.

Over the past few years, the 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. NATCA says the agency’s recent announcement that it would begin to hire more controllers was years too late and won’t bring staffing back to the pre-cutback levels until 2016. Says Forrey:

This is why NATCA is so firmly committed to speaking out against the terribly unsafe staffing levels in place today at facilities all over the country, especially considering the FAA has just announced a new controller workforce plan that is three years too late. Controllers are leaving at the rate of three per day. The agency has thrown out longstanding safe staffing levels at every facility and replaced them with a manufactured “range” of budget-based staffing levels that slashes between nine and 26 percent of the amount of controllers needed to properly staff towers and radar facilities.

The FAA is losing trained, experienced controllers faster than they can replace them because the Bush administration refuses to negotiate a contract with the workers. Earlier this month, Forrey told a Senate committee:

Morale among FAA employees is extremely low. Retirements are far exceeding FAA’s planning. Fatigue among those employees remaining is a major concern. And these are all effects of the unilaterally imposed work rules.

In September, we reported on staffing problems and the long and constantly changing hours controllers work. A 22-year veteran controller sent us a “typical schedule” at the time. He asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by the FAA.

•  Sunday, 4 p.m.–midnight
•  Monday, 2 p.m.–10 p.m
•  Tuesday, 7 a.m.–3 p.m.
• Wednesday, 6 a.m.–2 p.m
• Wednesday/Thursday, 11:30 p.m.–7:30 a.m.

You’ll notice there are two short “turn-arounds” with about nine hours between shifts. (Monday night to Tuesday morning, then again Wednesday afternoon to Wednesday night.) This compresses a five-day workweek almost into four days….It’s rough on the body and mind.

Recently, another controller, a 22-year veteran who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, sent us the FAA’s new five-day schedule that many controllers are forced to work. As the controller notes:

How can ANYONE in their right mind think this is tolerable by the average worker? Well. The FAA does! And they do it with glee. It seems that since they implemented their work rules, they search for more and more ways to jerk around the workforce.

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