Posted on 02/12/2009 4:43:50 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Most of the nation’s air traffic controllers charged with making the friendly skies safe for millions of airline passengers won’t be in their jobs in the next few years.
A generation of rookies hired in the early 1980s, after President Reagan fired more than 10,000 controllers for going on strike, is now approaching the mandatory retirement age of 56.
By next year alone, about 7,000 controllers—nearly half of the workforce—will be retiring from the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a report by the General Accounting Office in 2002. Thousands more will reach retirement age within about five years.
The anticipated mass exodus of experienced workers may not bode well for the safety of private and commercial air traffic. Replacing veteran controllers with a workforce of younger and less-skilled people could potentially lead to more operational errors, according to Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).
He says the controller involved in the US Airways flight that crash-landed in New York’s Hudson River last Thursday had about 10 years of experience “and did a fantastic job.” The jetliner hit a flock of birds, taking out both engines, moments after takeoff.
“Situations like a bird strike and two engines going out—if you’ve never experienced that or had exposure to that, there are all kinds of things that could go wrong, from landing issues to pitfalls of giving clearances,” Forrey says. “Everybody works together hand in hand. One mistake could screw everything up.”
About one-third of today’s air traffic controllers have less than five years’ experience, Forrey says, a figure that “grows daily and could weaken the safety net.”
Other aviation experts don’t agree. Laura Brown, an FAA spokeswoman, says there’s no evidence that the safety of air travel is compromised by hiring and training younger controllers. Nor is she aware of marked increases in operational errors when the young, new workforce was hired in the early ’80s to replace the striking air traffic controllers.
To prepare for the wave of looming retirements, Brown says, about 4,000 controllers were hired in the last two years (average age: 27), and a total of 17,000 will be brought on over the next decade.
She says the FAA has also issued 162 waivers that allow controllers to work past the mandatory retirement age of 56—the age that lawmakers have determined as close to the upper limit of controllers’ ability to make instant life-or-death decisions when directing some 200,000 daily flights. The waivers, which must be renewed each year, are offered to workers who perform extremely well in the job and are deemed to be physically fit.
NATCA isn’t challenging the mandatory retirement age, and Forrey admittedly calls the job “a younger person’s game” because of its multifaceted responsibilities, its enormous stresses and its reliance on a controller’s quick reactions. “As you get older, you slow down a bit at reacting,” he says. “But what you do find is that experience takes over. You can move as much or more traffic because you know what to expect and how to do it.”
Like it or not, the FAA’s Paul Takemoto says, the new crop of recruits is much more adept than their predecessors at learning the ropes.
“They’re bright and motivated,” he says. “They adapt to the [training] simulators like nothing because they’ve been raised on video games. The training requires decisive minds, making decisions quickly and acting on them. They pick it up so much more rapidly than my generation, and I’m 51.”
Air traffic controller Barrett Byrnes, 56, doesn’t quite see it that way. He says that half of the controllers he worked with during the last few years at New York’s hectic John F. Kennedy Airport were trainees, a troublesome prospect for the flying public.
“Our traffic at JFK had gone through the roof,” says Byrnes, who worked as a controller for 35 years. In 2001, they were dealing with 275,000 operations; now, it’s more than 400,000.
“I was constantly training these kids—and you miss things when you’re training a new controller,” he says. “Nuances will get past you. You’re trying to concentrate on what the trainee is doing and on what you’re doing,” he adds. “You could be working three runways at one time while you’re training the new people. Unfortunately, that’s a situation that’s rearing its ugly head more and more now.”
Carole Fleck is a senior editor at the AARP Bulletin.
Great! This means a job opening for Julio and Ms. Hughes from Ft. Myers!
FlightZNavyTowerActiverunway17winds340at19traffictwoF16sondownwindaltimiter30.08 reportgearat3miles only takes them a second to say.
/johnny
Reagan’s unflinching stance and decisive action on PATCO may have been the moment I became a conservative and a lifelong fan of his to boot.
Although I was young it gave me unbridled joy to watch the overnight transformation of the PATCO union boss from gasbag rabble rouser to beaten cur.
It probably was also the beginning of my distrust and loathing for mainstream media outlets such as ‘60 Minutes’ as they rushed an interview with the PATCO boss onto the air in a vain attempt to repair his image, reestablish the union’s viability and - of course - to paint Reagan in a bad light.
Thatcher had to face many similar confrontations in Britain at the time. Her unambiguous standards and her iron will earned her the same kind of hatred from zealots who were shocked, then angered that someone had decided to stand up to their bully-boy tactics.
Along with the release of the hostages, the rout of PATCO was a symbolic closing of the door on the dysfunctional 1970s. I can understand nostalgia for the 50s and 60s but attempts to bring back anything from the 70s tend to baffle me.
Thanks for posting. Interesting. I heard about this Monday while striking up a conversation with an ATC who mentioned it during his visit to the retail chain where I work. He also mentioned that he was retiring in a couple of months.
Ummm . . . if we managed to fire 10,000 air traffic controllers with almost no warning and replace them with no serious long-term disruption or safety compromises, why should there be a problem when these controllers start retiring? It could not possibly be as great a shock to the system as the situation that brought them in in the first place.
Ah but the crafty Reagan and his transportation secretary had a contingency - they had trained replacements ready to go and got back to 80% flight traffic capacity rather quickly.
Just cannot seem to find any concern, still looking.
“...after President Reagan fired more than 10,000 controllers for going on strike...”
I was at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic on the last plane that didn’t have to turn back to Europe when they went on strike. I was so glad Reagan fired them.
I ran into one of them later working the counter in my local pizza parlor. I had a good chuckle over that.
Oh aye - I’m not saying it was a walkover for Reagan.
I was working at the Cincinnati airport (which is actually in Kentucky) a year or two before the strike. I remember looking at the air traffic controllers parking lot just under the tower. There was a Ferrari, a few Porsches, a few other exotic 2-seaters, then several Mercedes, Corvettes and a lot of top end American luxury cars. Not a cheap one in the bunch.
But they wanted more.
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