House Blasts FAA over Controller Losses

A Qantas Boeing 747 passes other Boeing jumbo jets at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2007. A veteran air traffic controller at the Los Angeles Terminal Radar Control facility told a House aviation subcommittee hearing on June 12, 2008 that the number of fully certified controllers at his facility, the world's busiest, has dropped from 261 to 160, and that the FAA's rising use of overtime to cover shifts in Los Angeles had so tired controllers that errors were rising. Members of the subcommittee blasted the FAA's labor relations with its controller workforce and its handling of a surge in controller retirements. Credit: AP Photo/Reed Saxon

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Aviation Administration has mishandled a flood of retirements and resignations among experienced air traffic controllers just when more air travelers rely on them each year, House lawmakers were told Wednesday.

One 22-year veteran controller, Melvin S. Davis, said the FAA's rising use of overtime to cover shifts in Los Angeles had so tired controllers that errors were rising. "These mistakes eventually will result in a catastrophe," Davis told a House aviation subcommittee hearing. "It's amazing to me it hasn't already."

The FAA's chief operating officer, Henry Krakowski, assured the lawmakers the agency is managing "a reliable and safe system" and is having "no problems attracting qualified candidates" to replace veterans leaving in a long-anticipated bulge in retirements.

Krakowski didn't convince skeptical panel members who heard testimony from Transportation Department Inspector General Calvin L. Scovel III and from working controllers that the agency's hostile relations with the controllers union had pushed 25 percent more veteran controllers to leave since 2004 than the FAA had anticipated.

"It is clear the Federal Aviation Administration was not and is not ready to deal with the situation," said the chairman, Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill. "In my judgment there is little action being taken to address these problems."

Costello noted that the FAA has lost 954 experienced controllers since last October, leaving the lowest number of fully qualified controllers in 16 years.

The FAA has known for many years that it would have to replace a major portion of its work force early this century because President Reagan broke an earlier controllers union by firing 10,438 controllers in 1981. More than 12,000 were hired in the mid-1980s to replace them. In 2004, the FAA issued its first plan for handling the retirement of these replacements. Earlier this year, it said it would hire 17,000 controllers through 2017.

FAA underestimated controller attrition

But the FAA has consistently underestimated how many controllers would retire or quit since the fall of 2006, when the Bush administration declared an impasse in contract negotiations with the successor union. The FAA imposed new work rules, a 30 percent cut in starting pay, a freeze on base pay of current controllers and elimination of their premium pay opportunities. The IG's report said the imposed contract cut top pay from $143,984 to $106,200 and starting pay from $44,800 to $37,800.

The panel's top Republican, Thomas Petri of Wisconsin, joined in the criticism: "We would have been better off if this hiring had begun sooner to allow more transition time." He said he was now concerned over whether the FAA has too many trainees at air traffic control facilities and added, "Everyone would be well-served if the controllers union and FAA management could settle their outstanding labor issues."

Krakowski announced that the FAA had made a new offer to settle the dispute this week.

"I'm ready to go back to the table" to negotiate a new contract, said Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. He promised to review the new offer but said it appeared to be "nothing more than what they offered before or just a little bit extra."

Union spokesman Doug Church added later that "the FAA offer was literally slipped under Pat's door last night. This was a blatant attempt by the FAA to score cheap political points at the hearing."

Training oversight problem

Responding to Scovel's criticism that FAA field and headquarters employees can't tell who is responsible for training new hires because four FAA vice presidents oversee parts of it, Krakowski also announced that he was naming a new vice president for technical training, who would presumably have final say.

Davis, the Los Angeles controller, testified that in the last four years the number of fully certified controllers at his facility, the world's busiest, has dropped from 261 to 160 and controller overtime has surged from $250,000 a year to $4 million. During the period, the number of new hires still receiving on-the-job training has risen and the number of operational errors, where airplanes fly closer together than allowed, has grown from 10 to 31 and is on a pace for 40 this year.

Scovel reported that as of December, there were 11,026 fully qualified controllers and 3,584 in training, compared with 12,328 veterans and 2,209 trainees in April 2004. It can take three years or more of on-the-job training for a trainee to be certified to work all positions in a control facility.

Steven Wallace, a 17-year veteran controller at the Miami en route center, testified that he has watched many co-workers "become so stressed out, so worn down, so fatigued and so preoccupied with not making a fatal mistake that they have quit rather than run the risk of being the person on position when an accident occurs."

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