FAA, Controllers Fight Over Air Safety
Sunday September 2, 1:13 pm ET
By Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press Writer
Air Traffic Controllers and the FAA Have a Bitter Dispute Over Safety in the Skies


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The next time you board an airliner and buckle your seat belt, you are about to fly through a bitter labor dispute between some of the people most responsible for your safety in the skies.

The nation's air traffic controllers and the Federal Aviation Administration that employs them cannot agree whether enough qualified people are guiding air traffic or how safe the air space is today.

With airline travel rebounding almost to the volume before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, delays on scheduled U.S. flights have reached a record high. Nearly one-third of domestic flights on major carriers were late in June. And air traffic is growing.

At the same time, the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association been unable to agree on a new contract. A year ago, the FAA declared an impasse and imposed a contract. Since then, the retirement of experienced controllers has soared beyond the agency's forecasts.

"In several places, it has created a safety problem where controllers are working 10-hour days, 6-day weeks and working combined positions because they don't have enough fully trained bodies," union President Patrick Forrey said.

FAA figures show the number of fully certified controllers dropped to 11,467 in May -- the lowest in a decade the union says. Beside them in control centers are 3,300 so-called "developmental controllers" who are being trained on the job by other controllers. The trainees are not yet qualified for all work assignments required of fully certified controllers.

"They are pushing the envelope and somebody is going to snap," Forrey warned. "Unless the agency slows down the traffic, someone may make a mistake and then are they going to blame it on the controller?"

By contrast, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said, "This is the safest period in aviation history." She said the contract allowed the agency to more easily move staff to meet the needs of a changing airline industry.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey says the imposed contract "is saving taxpayers $1.9 billion over five years ... to invest in 21st Century air traffic systems."

The three-year average of fatal accidents on commercial flights has dropped to a record low .017 per 100,000 departures. Fatal accidents on private planes dropped from 354 in 2005 to a record low of 299 in 2006, and Brown says this year is below last year's pace.

The union says these national figures conceal risky situations in towers, terminal approach and at regional control centers where its members scan glowing radar screens with blips representing planes loaded with passengers they need to keep moving -- and keep apart.

Some of the union's examples:

-- At the Cleveland en route center, the nation's fourth busiest facility, 29 fully certified controllers have retired since the contract was imposed. Nineteen others have been promoted to management and 7 have transferred, leaving 366 certified controllers. Operational errors -- in which planes fly closer than they are supposed to -- soared to 34 this fiscal year, with a month left, compared to 16 in fiscal 2006.

-- The Chicago en route center, the fifth busiest facility, has lost 40 certified controllers by retirement and other reasons, leaving 360. So far, the center has recorded 21 operation errors for the fiscal year, compared to 12 the previous year.

-- In New York, southern California and Charlotte, N.C., on-the-job training of controllers was temporarily suspended this summer to evaluate a rash of errors.

-- At New York's LaGuardia airport on July 5, a trainee mistakenly cleared a 50-seat Comair jet to cross a runway on which a Delta 737 was landing at 150 mph. They missed each other by a few hundred feet. The trainee, supervised by a trainer, was handling more than 24 planes on the ground. A previous controller had complained the heavy load should be divided into two separate positions.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the LaGuardia incident and five other near-misses at airports this year -- two in Denver, and one each in San Francisco, Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., and Los Angeles. So-called runway incursions were so frequent that Blakey called a daylong industry brainstorming session at the FAA this month.

"These errors are the calling cards of mental fatigue," said Chicago Center controller Bryan Zilonis, a union vice president. "The FAA is slowly burning out their most experienced controllers due to their inability to properly staff positions at many facilities."

At the FAA, Brown paints a rosier picture of operational errors -- those cases where planes en route come within 1,000 feet of each other vertically or within 5 miles laterally, or within 3 miles near airports. The 12 months ending last Oct. 1 saw the first drop in operational errors in seven years, she said. "We're on target to continue the reduction in operational errors this year."

And she denies that trainees compromise safety.

"The raw number doesn't tell you their skill level," Brown said. A trainee is qualified separately for each work position and can safely work qualified positions long before being fully certified to work all positions, she said.

Trainees include novices from the FAA's academy but also experienced controllers hired from the military or transferred from an FAA facility where they were certified. Brown said experienced trainees can be certified in weeks at some less complicated facilities while novices may need up to three years on-the-job training at complex facilities.

Union spokesman Doug Church responded that a transferred controller, during training for his new location, was involved in the near-miss at LaGuardia where he said on-the-job training can take more than two years.

Church said FAA changed the definitions of operational errors this summer in a way that reduces their number. An FAA powerpoint description of the new definitions says planes can come 10 percent closer to each other before it's labeled an operational error. Using the revised criteria, there would have been 298 of the more serious errors in 2006, instead of the 627 under the old definition, according to the document.

Forrey predicted retirements will climb unless the contract is reopened for a negotiated settlement. A pending House bill to reauthorize FAA would do that, but the Bush administration is opposed.

The FAA-imposed contract cut starting pay by 30 percent, eliminated incentive pay for experienced controllers and gave managers more authority over staffing. Since last September, controllers have filed 220,000 grievances.

The FAA expects 800 retirements this fiscal year, Brown said. The figure has been revised upward twice from 643.

Brown said the agency has long known that 72 percent of its controllers become eligible to retire in the next decade. Most controllers were hired after President Ronald Reagan in 1981 fired more than 11,000 members of a predecessor union, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, after it refused to end an illegal strike.

Acknowledging flawed retirement estimates, Brown said, "It doesn't matter if we are off as long as we can increase the number we hire to compensate." Last year, hiring was boosted from 937 to more than 1,100; more than 1,500 have been hired this year.

Blakey says the key to improving safety is FAA's multi-billion-dollar NextGen plan to replace radar control with more precise satellite tracking so planes can fly closer. FAA awarded the first $1.8 billion contract Thursday, but the new system won't begin to operate until 2013.

"You still have to land them one at a time," responds union chief Forrey, who says more runways and controllers are needed. "NextGen is going to take years. They need to do something...now."

FAA: http://www.faa.gov

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