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Yet Another Report Shows Bush’s FAA Endangering Air Passenger Safety |
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For the second time this year, a major government study finds the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is putting airline passenger safety at risk because of its refusal to negotiate a contract with air traffic controllers.
Record numbers of controllers are leaving the towers and retiring, rather than endure the FAA’s unilaterally imposed work rules. Meanwhile, the remaining controllers are forced to work mandatory overtime to make up for the staff shortages.
This week, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report points to overworked and fatigued controllers as one reason air travelers face a high risk of a catastrophic runway collision between planes on the ground and those landing or taking off. Between September 2006 and September 2007, there were 370 such incidents, nearly matching 2001’s peak year when 407 incursions were reported.
An April report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NSTB) also found controller fatigue affects runway safety. Says Pat Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA):
How much more do we have to hear before the FAA is held accountable for the blatant disregard for safety it is showing by understaffing its facilities, working controllers past their breaking points and refusing to work with us to settle an ongoing contract negotiating impasse that has created the largest mass exodus of both veteran controllers and trainees we have seen since 1981?
Pure and simple, this FAA has alienated, bullied and angered its entire workforce with imposed work rules and pay cuts and caused 1,558 controllers (more than 10 percent of the workforce) and trainees to leave their posts in fiscal year 2007.
Malfunctioning technology, including ground radar that radar that breaks down when it’s needed the most—in heavy rain and snow—and faulty FAA leadership that has cut funding and staff for its runway safety office and hasn’t produced a runway safety plan since 2002, as other serious safety issues, says the GAO.
The GAO report says that 52 percent of the controllers at the nation’s busiest airport, Atlanta’s Heartsfield-Jackson International, regularly are forced to work six days a week. Overall, between 20 percent and 52 percent of the controllers at 25 FAA facilities are forced to work six days a week.
According to the Associated Press have been several near-collisions because of runaway incursions this year that could have cost hundreds of lives.
On August 16, two commercial jets carrying 296 people came within 37 feet of colliding at Los Angeles International. A Delta Boeing 757 touched down in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on July 11 and had to take off again immediately to avoid hitting a United Airbus A320 mistakenly on its runway. A Delta Boeing 737 landing at New York’s LaGuardia airport on July 5 narrowly missed a commuter jet that was mistakenly cleared to cross its runway.
The GAO says:
progress on addressing runway safety will be impeded until the human factors issues involving fatigue are addressed…agency officials indicated they had no plan to mitigate the effects of air traffic controller fatigue.
Along with its failure to negotiate a contract, the FAA repeatedly has cut staffing at control towers over the past few years and decreased the amount of time between work shifts, forcing controllers to work even when they have not had sufficient rest.
A House-passed FAA reauthorization bill would provide $114 million to improve runway safety and also require the FAA to reopen talks with NATCA for a fair contract. The Bush administration says it will veto the bill because of the negotiation provision. Says Forrey:
As the GAO stated, the FAA is doing nothing to mitigate the effects of fatigue. The time to act is now, not after a catastrophe. The agency needs to sit down and settle the labor problems with its unions, stop the bleeding of experienced controllers and find ways to entice the best and brightest to stay on the job and fix these safety problems with a fully staffed and rested workforce.
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