FAA and Union Go Into a Stall Over Fate of Air Traffic Control

Aviation safety hangs in the balance as contract talks between the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the air traffic controllers' union have stalemated. While FAA insists that it only wants to get back some of its "management rights," the union says its members' jobs have never been worse than they are right now.

From the FAA's point of view, the agency's loss of administrative control over air traffic control (ATC) staffing issues, in particular, combined with soaring controller compensation levels, has put the agency through "the death of a thousand cuts," says Greg Martin, FAA's communications director.

Meanwhile, a union official that claims to represent 85 percent of the nation's controllers, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), says current staffing is "ridiculously low."

In December, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Int'l Airport (ATL) served as a proxy for this struggle between FAA and the union. The union says FAA reneged on a deal to adequately staff the tower in Atlanta by cutting back on 10 promised new controller positions. Not only is Hartsfield-Jackson now the busiest airport in the country, but it also has more runway crossings than ever, the union argues.

But according to FAA, there was never any such deal, Martin tells Air Safety Week.

There are other airports that are at least as bad off as Atlanta, the union claims. Both Los Angeles Int'l (LAX) and Oakland Int'l (MCO), for example, are two of the lowest-staffed facilities in the country, union spokesman Doug Church insists. Overall, it's a system that is "straining very badly," he adds.

So, right now, the FAA/union negotiations, which started last summer, do not appear to have an end in sight. Talks were scheduled to resume last week in New Orleans, Martin says. And several more rounds are already scheduled: In Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23; in Seattle on Feb. 13-14; and back to D.C. on March 6-10.

The pace of negotiations has indeed been "frustrating," FAA's Martin admits. The two sides remain far apart, especially on issues related to compensation.

Whenever the negotiations end, it'll likely mean that both sides will have given in somewhat, resulting in the continued deterioration of the ATC system, says aviation safety consultant Billie Vincent, who worked in ATC for 24 years, ending his career as chief of the New York center. If events are true to their historical patterns, when the next bad incident happens, Congress will quickly jump into the fray. Then the innocent will be fired and the guilty will get promoted, he asserts.

Unless Congress does get involved, FAA will attempt to impose a contract on the controllers that is simply not fair, and will wind up stretching the existing workforce further and further, Church tells Air Safety Week. That eventuality will have "big safety implications."

For its part, the FAA's Martin casts the agency's arguments in terms of the controllers' rapidly escalating pay levels -- which now stand at $166,000 for an annual yearly average, the agency says -- and the eroding of those "management rights." With the former, FAA's Martin points to a 74 percent pay increase over the life of the current five-year contract. That agreement also originally came with a $200 million price tag for the first three years; but in actuality, it turned into well over $1 billion in extra costs over the same time period.

The FAA's "management rights" demands include things that on their face may seem like what most corporate officials take for granted -- like being able to set the work schedule, determine seniority, adjust staffing levels, as well as the use of part-time workers, how new technologies are implemented, and limiting the costs of certain job entitlements.