Tired, Overstressed Air Traffic Controllers Got No Relief in 2007

by James Parks, Dec 24, 2007

If you’re traveling by plane this holiday season, here’s a reminder about the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) website, AvoidDelays.com. The site provides information on what really is happening in the nation’s air travel and offers tips to avoid some of the worst bottlenecks. (See video.)

According to two major federal studies, the record numbers of delays and near misses in 2007 are the result of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) putting airline passenger safety at risk because of its refusal to negotiate a contract with air traffic controllers. The result, as we’ve noted many times this year, is that air traffic controllers are overworked, underpaid and stressed out.

In fact, 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.

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, 370 such incidents occurred, nearly matching 2001’s peak year when 407 incursions were reported.

According to NATCA, since 2002, the percentage of veteran controllers on the job has decreased by 12 percent and the number of late arrivals more than doubled, to 105.9 percent. At the same time, the number of serious incidents of aircraft getting too close in the air also rose sharply in October, exceeding the FAA’s goal for the month by 36 percent.

NATCA says a record number of air traffic controller retirements and total attrition in fiscal year 2007 soared past FAA projections by 30 percent. Today, there is a 15-year low in the number of fully certified controllers on the job and a glut of new hires—many with no air traffic control experience or education—whom the FAA is failing to train either effectively or efficiently.

On Dec. 31, it will be 485 days that controllers have been working without a contract.

NATCA President Patrick Forrey says the flying public should be concerned:

There is only one possible solution to this crisis: We must have a contract. Make no mistake about it. Our system is on the brink of a total breakdown because of the careless and reckless actions of the FAA, which failed to get ahead of a staffing crisis years in the making. Flight delays are at an all-time high and will get worse.

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.

The recently passed omnibus budget bill included FAA’s reauthorization and provides $114 million to improve runway safety. The House passed a bill to require the FAA to reopen talks with NATCA for a fair contract. The Senate has not yet taken up the bill and the requirement was not included in the budget bill. President Bush has threatened to veto any bill that contains the negotiation provision.

To make matters worse, we noted that news reports appeared in October revealing the Bush administration tried to bury 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 withheld 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 acknowledged.

In just one recent example of why the air traffic system is in crisis, NATCA reports an air traffic controller at Syracuse Tower was forced to work 13 hours and 40 minutes in a single shift Dec. 4, lasting from 2:20 p.m. to 4 a.m. the next morning. When a regularly scheduled controller called in sick, no controller was available for overtime due to short staffing. So management decided to hold a controller over from the afternoon/evening shift until 4 a.m.

Phil Barbarello, NATCA’s eastern regional vice president, says the 13-hour shift is:

a prime example of how staffing is really hurting us physically. This decision was absolutely ridiculous and extremely unsafe.

Due to the FAA’s imposed work rules, the Syracuse tower will lose four more veteran controllers to retirement in January, leaving the facility with just 16 fully trained and certified controllers, Barbarello says. In less than 45 days, he says, the Syracuse tower will be operating with one-half of the qualified air traffic controllers it had just a few short years ago.

How about the FAA’s latest scheme to decrease delays by changing routes and procedures in the airspace around New York City and Philadelphia? Well, nobody talked to the controllers about it.

Instead, the new procedures are being jammed down their throats by FAA management with wholly inadequate training and staffing, leading to mass confusion and new concerns that the FAA is compromising safety.

Forrey says:

Controllers do not feel prepared to add this new workload to their already overstretched limits. What we have now, courtesy of the FAA, are all the ingredients for an aviation catastrophe, and it both saddens and infuriates me.

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