Retirement in the Air for Traffic Controllers

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Aviation Administration is looking for a few thousand good men and women. Anyone who sets foot on an airplane had better hope it finds them.

Nearly three-quarters of the nation's nearly 15,000 air traffic controllers will reach retirement age within the next nine years. The vast bulk of those come from the wave of new hires made after President Reagan fired more than 10,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981.

To deal with the impending retirements, the FAA hopes to hire 12,500 new air traffic controllers in the coming years. President Bush's 2006 budget included money to hire 595 new controllers, on top of the FAA's plan to hire replacements for all 654 controllers set to retire this year.

Aviation observers say the continued safety and efficiency of air travel is at stake.

"The challenge is to ensure the FAA has a credible staffing plan that maintains current safety levels in the most efficient way possible," said U.S. Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, who is chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that controls FAA funding. "Congress needs to take a close look at how this plan is being implemented, if training procedures can be improved and if there are ways to increase the role of technology to improve efficiency."

FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said: "We do have the plan in place and we feel we have the time to make it work and get people in place, fully trained."

To help the process along, the FAA hopes to train new controllers more quickly and to get more productivity out of new recruits.

But some question the FAA's efforts, wondering if the hiring is fast enough and whether the agency might better spend money on a more dramatic overhaul of the way airplanes fly. The critics note that U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta has called for tripling the capacity of the airways over the next 15 or 20 years.

"We'd feel better if this had started in 1999, not 2004," said Doug Church, spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the controllers union. "But if these numbers hold up, if they hire what they say they're going to hire, that looks good."

Church observed that last year the actual number of retirements topped FAA predictions. And he added that with even more retirements coming, and the lengthy training time for controllers, the numbers of controllers will go down before they start going up.

The controllers union is especially concerned about a recent decision by the FAA to fire controllers who fail to qualify at a high level of training even though they have passed lower levels. In the past, such controllers have been given jobs at lower-pressure, smaller towers, in assignments for which they were qualified.

For example, at the regional flight control center in Olathe, five controllers could lose their jobs because they have not passed one of the qualifying stages, said union representative Howard Blankenship.

He added that the center is authorized for more than 390 controllers but is already understaffed by about 30.

"It's absurd," said Ruth Marlin, the union's executive vice president. "When they should be trying to attract people, they're actually implementing a policy that drives them away."

Marlin said that during contract talks this summer, the union would press the FAA to revisit the decision to let underqualified staffers go.

But Steve Baker, a supervisor at Kansas City International Airport air traffic control tower, said such employees are sometimes bitter toward the agency and do not always work out.

Speaking in his role as vice president of the FAA Manager's Association, Baker said it's difficult for the FAA to move controllers around. He hopes the agency addresses that issue in the contract talks.

Others wonder whether the FAA should focus instead on new technologies that could actually reduce the need for air traffic controllers.

"The real solution isn't just to replace the thousands of bodies, but to convert the system to a satellite-based system, which is more automated," said David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association. "We have a big ocean of air over our country, and we don't use it as efficiently as we should."

In such a system, air traffic controllers would act as monitors and human backups, Stempler said.

But that brings up a parallel problem: The FAA is not investing in new technology at the rate many would like.

Bush's budget for the next fiscal year cut the agency's allotment for air traffic control modernization by $77 million, to $2.4 billion; that's on top of a $400 million cut in the current year's budget compared to what Congress authorized.

Molinaro said the agency's technology was up to date. But at a recent hearing on the FAA budget, Bond criticized "budget gnomes" for hamstringing modernization efforts.

"Not only do we need to hire more controllers, but we need to make sure that we are using all of our resources and technology effectively," said U.S. Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri, who sits on the Aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "Cutting corners is not an option."