by Mike Hall, Oct 23, 2007

On the same day the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) released new figures showing a record exodus of experienced controllers because the Bush administration refuses to negotiate a new contract, news reports surfaced the Bush administration is burying an alarming new report on serious passenger air safety problems.

The report makes the Bush administration look so bad that it has ordered the contractor who conducted the study for NASA to purge all related data from its computers, according to the Associated Press.

Anxious to avoid upsetting air travelers, NASA is withholding results from an unprecedented national survey of pilots that found safety problems like near collisions and runway interference occur far more frequently than the government previously recognized.

 

NASA gathered the information under an $8.5 million safety project, through telephone interviews with roughly 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots over nearly four years. Since ending the interviews at the beginning of 2005 and shutting down the project completely more than one year ago, the space agency has refused to divulge the results publicly.

 

Just last week, NASA ordered the contractor that conducted the survey to purge all related data from its computers.

NASA pulled the plug on the survey more than a year ago, and NATCA spokesman Doug Church says if the survey had included interviews with controllers—especially during the past year—the findings could have even been more startling.

They didn’t even get around to interviewing controllers. We feel vindicated. We’ve said it all along, there is a safety problem and the root of it is there are not enough air traffic controllers.

Today, NATCA released figures showing a record number of retirements and attrition in the controller workforce for fiscal year 2007, which ended Sept. 30. In 2006, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) broke off contract talks with NATCA and then unilaterally imposed new work rules and pay cuts for new hires, driving both senior and new employees out of the control towers.

Some 856 controllers, or 7.4 percent of the experienced controllers, retired last year, leaving the nation’s control towers with a 15-year low of fully certified controllers and many inexperienced new employees. There are 11,256 fully trained and certified controllers working at the FAA’s 314 facilities. That’s a 4 percent decline from one year ago and the lowest total of experienced controllers since 1992, when there were 10,696.

Says NATCA President Patrick Forrey

Here is perhaps the most compelling evidence that the lack of a contract is the reason for the surge in retirements: Of the 856 who retired in fiscal year 2007, only 16 of them were forced out by the mandatory retirement age of 56. That’s 16! Everyone else left because they are FED UP with the FAA’s draconian treatment.  They walked out the door with several years of experience still left on the table that the agency desperately needs to keep the system running at peak efficiency and safety. This is because the FAA cares only about cutting salary costs, and overpowering, intimidating and demoralizing its workforce, while at the same time keeping their own supervisors fully staffed and flush with cash. Twenty-five percent of FAA management now makes what a member of Congress makes.

The FAA staffing crisis not only is forcing experienced controllers out the door; the staffing shortage is burning out the new hires. In her resignation letter, Miami trainee Shesly Gonzalez writes:

There is a growing tension in Miami Center that can be felt upon entering the control room. The staffing crisis has reached a point that forces fully certified controllers to work 10-hour days, six days a week. The controllers are exhausted, causing morale to be low and making it a very negative atmosphere to work in, not to mention the adverse implications that this has on safety.

 

Says Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.):

The public has an absolute right to know about what is in this report. As a mother who frequently travels with my three year old son, I believe this information can be helpful in making sure we do all we can to improve air travel safety.

For some time now, I have been growing increasingly concerned with air safety, specifically in regard to the stresses placed on our air traffic controllers and their work conditions. News reports of this study only fuel my concerns.

The AP notes that while NASA is associated with space flight, it has a long history in the field of aviation safety. The wire service also reports that the FAA disputes the study’s findings. But Robert David, who managed the survey, says:

The data is strong. Our process was very meticulously designed and very thorough. It was very scientific.

NASA’s decision to bury the report has “a faint odor about it,” says Rep Brad Miller (D-N.C.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee. In a letter to NASA, he says:

The data appears to have great value to aviation safety, but not on a shelf at NASA.

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