Lack of controllers - result: safety problem

Air travel volumes are rebounding to pre-9/11 levels, and growing fast. In the meantime, flight delays have reached record levels, and rising fast. In June, close to one-third of domestic flights were late.

But the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the nation’s air traffic controllers are still at odds over the proper number of qualified controllers to guide air traffic and the safety of air travel hangs in the balance.

For over a year, the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association have not negotiated a contract. An interim contract unilaterally imposed by FAA is being followed for now. Experienced controllers have retired in numbers that far exceed FAA forecasts. For this fiscal year, the FAA projects 800 retirements, already revised two times from an original estimate of 643.

As of May, FAA figures show the level of fully certified controllers has dropped to 11,467 -- the lowest in ten years, according to the union. Working with them are 3,300 trainees who qualify for some, but not all, work assignments. Not all trainees are novices from the FAA academy; some experienced people are recruited from the military or are transferred from another FAA facility where they were already certified.

The union says the lack of controllers has resulted in a safety problem. Controllers have to work 10-hour days and 6-day weeks, and often have to combine positions due to lack of warm bodies.

The FAA’s unilateral contract reduced starting pay by 30 percent and removed incentive pay for experienced controllers. Within this fiscal year, controllers have filed 220,000 grievances.

The FAA insists the statistics indicate that fatal accidents are down. But the union says the figures conceal many risky situations and near-accidents which cause -- and are the result of -- great stress.

A union official said operational errors are growing and the FAA is burning out experienced controllers because of improper staffing. These errors are signs of mental fatigue. At Cleveland en route center, operational errors (where planes fly closer than they should) doubled to 34 so far this fiscal year versus 16 last year; at Chicago en route center, operational errors have reached 21 this fiscal year versus 12 last year.

One example (among many) cited by the union is the July 5 incident at New York’s LaGuardia airport. A Comair jet was mistakenly cleared to cross a runway on which another plane was landing at 150mph. The planes missed crashing into each other by a few hundred feet.

The erring trainee was handling 24 other planes on the ground at the time. A previous controller had already recommended that the load be split into two positions. The trainee was not a novice, but a controller transferred from another FAA facility.

There were five other near-misses this year, all of which are under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

For the FAA, safety improvements can be best achieved by its multi-billion-dollar plans to install satellite tracking systems.

For the controllers, the key still is to land the planes one at a time. New satellite-based systems will take years to complete; the increasing operational errors need some action now.