Union Says: FAA Plans to Hire Fewer Air Traffic Controllers Than its Target

Feb. 23 -- The air traffic controllers union says the Federal Aviation Administration will hire far fewer controllers this year than its target number, a move the union says could affect passenger safety.

The union said the FAA will hire 949 controllers, 300 fewer than the 1,249 it had targeted to take on this year.

But FAA officials said yesterday they were not yet sure how many controllers will be hired in fiscal 2006.

The union and the FAA have been locked in contentious negotiations since July for a new labor contract.

John Carr, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents about 14,000 controllers across the country, said yesterday that union officials learned of the FAA's plans after obtaining notes from a Feb. 9 teleconference of top agency officials. Carr said the meeting was of the FAA'S Western Enroute Operations Service Area, one of three such areas in the United States.

Phil Barbarello, a union spokesman, said he believed the FAA's "only concern is to meet some fictitious budget number. I consider their methodology and means a dangerous game. They're playing a game of Russian roulette with the public."

FAA officials, however, have stressed that passenger safety is in no way being compromised.

In a Web log posted yesterday, Carr said the FAA is "gutting their own hiring plan by 300 air traffic control positions. They aren't gutting our plan. They aren't gutting someone else's plan. They are gutting their own plan, the very first year it was supposed to begin having a net positive effect on the profession."

Carr said that all federal agencies, including the FAA, were ordered by Congress in December to cut their budgets by 1 percent for fiscal year 2006, which began Oct 1.

Carr said that cutting 1 percent should mean about 12 fewer controllers should be hired, not 300 fewer.

The union said the plans to reduce hiring are coming as the number of air traffic controllers is dropping dramatically, largely because of budget cuts.

There are about 14,227 controllers working today, 7.5 percent fewer than at the end of the fiscal year 2003.

Union officials said the number now working represents a 3.5 percent drop in the past 16 months alone.

Greg Martin, an FAA spokesman in Washington, D.C., said a 1 percent recision in the agency's budget represents a cut of about $30 million.

"We have not yet determined what affect that 1 percent recision will have for us," Martin said.

He said the agency is continuing to "work to" the target of hiring 1,249 controllers this year. But success is not guaranteed. "The union's view is a very controllers-centric view of aviation and it fails to recognize other needs the FAA has," Martin said.

He mentioned that funds also are needed for additional safety inspections and modernizing air-traffic control equipment.

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