Turnover turmoil buffets air-control system

About a week and a half ago, the Federal Aviation Administration closed the air space over Raleigh-Durham International Airport and several other corridors above North Carolina. For about 28 minutes on the afternoon of June 19, all flights were halted over much of the eastern half of the state.

Skies over the region were cloudy, but there was little wind and no hint of rain, and visibility was good. No emergency was reported; no special VIP aircraft was coming through; no threat had been registered.

The reason for the shutdown, it turned out, was earthbound. The lone air traffic controller on duty for the area had been working two people’s jobs for more than eight hours, and he or she finally had to go to the bathroom and get something to eat, the air traffic controllers’ union claimed. It said takeoffs from Raleigh-Durham were delayed, while flights already in the air had to be redirected.

Tammy Jones, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, confirmed the shutdown but said no flights were delayed and no planes were placed in any danger. Four controllers at the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center in Leesburg, Va., the radar facility that handles flights over North Carolina and four other states, had been unable to come in, probably because of illness, and for a brief period, she said, no substitute was on hand. A second controller was quickly called in, she said.

Federal aviation records indicate — and the controllers union agrees — that staffing-related shutdowns like the one at Washington Center are extremely rare. But Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, maintained that the so-called ATC-0 incident over North Carolina was symptomatic of a larger staffing crisis at the FAA.

NATCA is locked in a contract dispute with the FAA, which imposed its own work rules and froze controllers’ salaries in 2006, so it has an interest in criticizing the agency’s management. But federal records indicate it has a good case.

Turnover in airport towers and at regional radar facilities and flight service centers is so rapid that experienced controllers are leaving faster than their replacements can be hired and certified. That means controllers still in training are often guiding planes on takeoff, in the air and on landing.

Meanwhile, a satellite-based air traffic management system, designed to automate more efficient flight paths, remains years off, even as current facilities are reaching and surpassing their expected useful lifespans.

‘Trainees’ can be highly experienced
According to staffing records of the FAA and the Transportation Department, its parent agency, nearly 4,000 air traffic controllers in training were on the job at the beginning of the year without having completed full certification. That’s about 27 percent of a current professional staff handling the 50,000 or so flights that travel the nation’s skies each day.

By itself, that figure isn’t unusual; in fact, it’s below the FAA’s own ceiling of 35 percent. Air traffic controllers complete their training on the job, so trainees are always going to make up a significant proportion of the working staff.

“The only alternative is to not replace controllers who retire, and that simply is not an option,” said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the FAA.  

Controllers in training aren’t necessarily inexperienced controllers. They can be veteran controllers who are simply learning the specifics of new assignments: retired military controllers, certified controllers who have transferred from other facilities or retired FAA controllers working as contractors.

An msnbc.com-NBC News special report Alex Johnson is a reporter for msnbc.com. The following NBC stations contributed to this report: KSN of Wichita, Kan.; KTUU of Anchorage, Alaska; KXAS of Dallas; and WMC of Memphis, Tenn.

But the clear majority of the trainees in the FAA’s recent hiring wave are new to the profession. The FAA is hiring so quickly that “developmental controllers” — those with no previous experience — make up about two-thirds of those in training and slightly less than a fifth of all federal air traffic controllers.

“It’s a dangerous circumstance that we just need to address,” said Dean Headley, co-author of the closely watched Airline Quality Rating, an annual survey of aviation performance by Wichita State University and Saint Louis University.

Gregor acknowledged that “we currently do have a higher percentage of developmentals in our facilities than we have had in recent years,” but he said the agency’s training programs “are set up to maximize quality training, both in the classroom and on the job.” 

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