The Situation in the Air Traffic Profession
Air Traffic Controllers: New FAA Contract Will Lead to Longer Hours, Fatigue
WASHINGTON -- Air traffic controllers said Friday they will be forced to work even when they are tired under a contract the Federal Aviation Administration plans to impose this weekend.
and
The controllers' new contract with the FAA follows nine months of bitter negotiations that broke down in April. Controllers sought binding arbitration, but the FAA said the law gives it the right to impose its last, best offer.
A section of the contract reads, "Sick leave cannot be granted for rest or minor inconveniences," according to a briefing guide for the FAA's collective bargaining agreement with the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers.
So the controller has the choice of using vacation time, or better yet comp time (because it's otherwise paid at overtime rates) or just coming to work and working traffic when they're too tired to see straight after two straight quick turns? Does this impress any member of the flying public as the right set of incentives?
"We would never have a controller controlling traffic who was too tired to work," said FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown.
but
On Friday, the FAA's air traffic manager at Washington Center said he would discipline any controller who called in sick because he was fatigued, Rinaldi said.
The union has said the FAA is hostile to controllers and that its contract will result in a wave of retirements because it creates a disincentive for controllers to stay on the job.
and
Nearly half the current controllers are expected to retire in the next decade. Most of those workers are replacements for the controllers fired by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 for refusing to abandon a strike that he considered illegal.
Ladies and gentlemen: The strike happened in 1981. That wave of controllers who were hired in and immediately after 1981 are eligible for retirement now. If the FAA can't come up with better reasons for them to stay on the job, half of the ones who are there will leave. Imagine what that will do to already minimal staffing levels. 25 years ago, air traffic (outside of general aviation) was a much smaller number of flights per day.
Going to bring the military controllers over again? That was marginal enough back in 1981. The traffic situation is far more dense now, and the military doesn't have as many radar facilities - the FAA took a lot of them over. The military has a fair number of tower controllers, but handling F-18s is a very different skill from blending Cessnas and jumbo jets, and outside of the training facilities that bring military pilots from their first flight on, military controllers just don't see the mix of traffic that civil ones do.
Controllers: Staff shortages nationwide
Efficiencies will include cutting workers' compensation and overtime costs, reducing training time and matching the number of controllers at a facility to the amount of air traffic.
Dr. Charles Czeisler, professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School, said the Lexington controller's sleep deprivation meant it was likely he suffered attention lapses and he took three times as long to react to things.
For the average person who's been on duty for 17 of the previous 24 hours and has had two hours of sleep, "the impairment is comparable to being legally drunk," Czeisler said.
Been there. Done that. Seen many, many people in the same situation, many times.
If you have to do the rotating shifts thing, rotate clockwise, so that there are at least 24 hours between shift start and shift start, not reverse clockwise so that there are 24 hours at most.
Nobody can know whether that controller being less tired would have enabled him to notice ComAir 5191 taking off on a runway that was too short in time for it to make a difference. It is not the primarily the controller's responsibility, although in practical usage if they didn't stop a lot of this sort of thing there would be an amazingly large number of bodies on the ground. All I can tell you is that in twelve years, I had something like thirty gear saves alone. People don't usually die from gear up landings, and
You know, I don't fly often, nor does any of my immediate family. This just doesn't touch me very much any more. Maybe those of you who do might have some kind of motivation to talk to your congresscritter about fixing the FAA? Maybe get your congresscritter to go out and ask a few controllers about what things are like? Due to the good ol' boy (and good ol' girl) network, FAA management is very badly broken. Get some money to maybe afford decent staffing levels? Maybe even reform the personnel rules so that people who shouldn't be working, aren't? Perhaps alternate staffing like nurses do: four ten hour days, or three twelve, but with more time between shifts, so that controllers still get the same sort of weekend everybody else does. Perhaps cut the workweek to 36 hours in four nine hour shifts rotating with the clock, rather than against? Okay it's less than the standard 40, but what's more important: Working your mule the same as every other mule, or not having airplane accidents? Which might be more important to you: a $2 surcharge on the cost of your ticket, or the possibility your plane will have something happen to it because the controller who might have prevented it was so tired they might as well have been drunk?
UPDATE: Changed ambiguous wording in next to last paragraph as noted.
Categories
Air Trafficblog advertising
--Blogads--
blog advertising --Blogads--
My Links
-
Heavy Lifters
- Instapundit
- Michelle Malkin
- Scrappleface
- Volokh Conspiracy
- Captain's Quarters
- Wizbang
- Victor Davis Hanson
- Eject! Eject! Eject!
- Michael Barone
- The Victory Caucus
- The Truth Laid Bear Places I get to as often as I can
- The Command Post
- Good News Central
- Icerocket
- Life Liberty Property
- MEMRI
- Raging RINO Community
- Technorati
- Transparency International
- Wide Awakes
- The Anchoress
- Argghhh! R
- Armies of Liberation R
- Asymmetrical Information
- Austin Bay
- Belmont Club
- Big Lizards
- Tim Blair
- Cox and Forkum
- Dr. Sanity
- Kevin Drum
- Gateway Pundit
- Hugh Hewitt
- Iraq the Model
- Jeff Jarvis
- Jihad Watch
- John Leo
- Lileks Screed
- Little Green Footballs
- Josh Marshall
- Mudville Gazette
- Neo-neocon
- WSJ OpinionJournal
- Politburo Diktat R
- Powerline
- Powerline News
- Protein Wisdom
- Q and O L
- Real Clear Politics
- Mark Steyn
- Stop the ACLU
- Strategy Page
- Don Surber R
- Vodkapundit
- Watching America
- Matthew Yglesias
- Michael Yon Personal Finance, Economics and Business Sites
- Bloodhound Blog
- Consumerism Commentary
- Eidelblog L
- The Entrepreneurial Mind
- Finance Blog
- Financial Rounds
- Free Money Financea>
- In Cash Flow We Trust
- I Will Teach You To Be Rich
- Mortgage Fraud Blog
- No Credit Needed
- Old Niu's Blog
- Pacesetter Mortgage Blog
- Personal Finance Advice
- pfblogs.org
- Social Security Choice
- Students for Saving Social Security Other sites I've linked and visit
- Accuracy In Media
- Ace of Spades
- The Agitator
- All Things Jennifer R
- Ann Althouse
- American Citizen Soldier
- The Anarchangel L
- Angry in the Great White North L
- Antigravitas L
- The Anti Idiotarian Rottweiler
- Art of the Blog R
- Atlas Shrugs
- aTypical Joe R
- Professor Bainbridge R
- Baldilocks
- Barcepundit
- Beldar
- Belgravia Dispatch
- Below The Beltway L
- Blackfive
- The Buck Stops Here
- Catallarchy L
- Chapomatic
- Chequer-Board of Nights & Days
- Clarity and Resolve
- Classical Values R
- Combs Spouts Off L
- Common Sense and Wonder
- The Counterterrorism Blog
- Countertop Chronicles R
- Coyote Blog
- Daily Howler
- Daily Pundit R
- David's Medienkritic
- Dean's World R
- Decision '08 R
- De Doc L
- Brad DeLong
- Democratic Peace
- Different River
- Digger's Realm R
- Done With Mirrors R
- Drink This
- Drudge Report
- DUmmie FUnnies
- enrevanche R
- Eschaton
- Evolution R
- Fearless Philosophy L
- Forward Biased L
- Generation Why?"
- Happycrow's Eyeball Factory L
- Hold The Mayo L
- Huffington Post
- The Idiom
- IMAO
- INCITE L
- INDC Journal R
- Inside Larry's Head R
- Inoperable Terran
- Iowahawk
- It Comes In Pints?"
- The Jawa Report R
- Just One Minute
- Justus for All R
- Kausfiles
- Ezra Klein
- Daily Kos
- La Shawn Barber
- Liberals Against Terrorism
- Libercontrarian RL
- Libertarian Leanings R
- Liberty Papers
- Carol Platt Liebau
- Llama Butchers R
- Mensa Barbie
- The Moderate Voice
- Mossback Culture R
- Mover Mike L
- Mr. Completely L
- National Review Online
- No Angst Zone L
- Normblog
- Brendan Nyhan
- Ogre's Politics & Views L
- One Fine Jay R
- Owlish Mutterings L
- Patterico's Pontifications
- Peter Porcupine L
- Bradford Plumer
- Pole Dancing In The Dark L
- Political Calculations
- POV R
- Publius Pundit
- Radio Equalizer
- Reasoned Audacity
- Respectful Insolence R
- Rhymes with Right L
- Riehl World View
- Right Place
- Right Reason
- Right Thoughts R
- Right Wing Death Beast
- Right Wing Nut House
- ROFASix
- Samizdata
- Say Uncle RL
- Debbie Schlussel
- SCOTUS Blog
- Roger L. Simon
- The Strata-Sphere R
- TacJammer
- TalkLeft
- TAPPED
- Target Centermass L
- Technography R"
- Tempus Fugit
- Texas Best Grok L
- Tigerhawk
- Link Text
- Tinkerty-Tonk R
- Tom Rants RL
- Unalienable Right
- Uncommon Insanity L
- Unrepentant Individual L
- Villainous Company
- Oliver Willis
- Willisms
- The World According to Nick R
- World Wide Rant R Link Exchanges, etcetera
- But That's Just My Opinion
- Condo Buzz NYC
- Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns
- DANEgerus R
- A Dollop of Sour Cream
- Dust My Broom L
- Generic Confusion R
- Grim's Hall
- Heartless Libertarian L
- individ L
- Kesher Talk R
- Leaning Toward The Dark Side R
- Libertopia L
- Liberty Corner L
- Medary L
- Mondo QT L
- Nose On Your Face R
- Pererro R
- Pratie Place
- Random Fate R
- Ravings of John C. A. Bambanek L
- Signifying Nothing R
- The Skwib L
- Tel-Chai Nation
- TF Sterns Rantings L
- DC Thornton R
- Wake Me Up On Judgement Day R
- Windypundit L Consumer and Research Sites
- Better Business Bureau
- Consumer Reports
- NASD Home
- California Department of Real Estate
- California Licensee Lookup
- California Department of Insurance
- National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)
- Do Not Call Homepage
- IRS Charities Search
- Internet Fraud Complaint Center
- SEC Home Page
- Stop Mortgage Fraud
- Report Mortgage Fraud Debunking Many so-called Real Estate Gurus
- John T. Reed Other research
- FactCheck.org
- Babel Fish Translation
- Snopes Worthwhile Web Comics
- Sluggy Freelance
- Day by Day
- User Friendly
- Kevin and Kell It is site policy to list the main page of every site I reference. Sometimes the real world intervenes and I haven't gotten to it yet, or one falls through the cracks on a long post with multiple references. It is also site policy to list the main page of every site that lists this one on their equivalent roll, as well as the main page of all sites that are members of any of the same groups this site is a member of. Please send me an email with a link to the main page of your site if I've overlooked you (dm at the domain name). For the clue-challenged, note that it is a requirement for your link to appear on every page of your site, just like mine does, and I will not link to spam sites. Honor Roll of Sites Banned by Paranoid Repressive Governments: (be the first on your block to submit a link!)
Requests for reprint rights, contact dm (at) searchlightcrusade (dot) net! Subscribe to Searchlight Crusade
C'mon! I need to pay for this website! If you want to buy or sell Real Estate in San Diego County, or get a loan anywhere in California, contact me! I cover San Diego County in person and all of California via internet, phone, fax, and overnight mail.
**********
Contact me! dm (at) searchlight crusade (dot) net (Eliminate the spaces and change parentheticals to the symbols, of course)
Leave a comment