Flight trackers 'dogging it' at key LI post

New York Post ^ | February 6, 2011 | Brad Hamilton

[MoodyBlu]

It's a flier alarm.

The feds are investigating charges that New York air-traffic controllers endanger passengers by working just three hours per shift and acting like slackers -- chatting, texting and even watching movies when they should be monitoring planes, The Post has learned.

At times, so few are at their posts that a single controller must do the job of two or three and track 15 aircraft simultaneously, which is too many, according to allegations filed by a supervisor.

Evan Seeley, a frontline manager at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center in Ronkonkoma, LI, fired off complaints last month to the Federal Aviation Administration and the Office of Special Counsel, a federal agency that probes whistleblower claims. The Post obtained copies.

[MoodyBlu]

I am a retired controller and former member of the union. I saw the exact same stuff at my former duty stations. A lot of "lolly gaggers"!

[23 Everest]

Hey New York Post how ya gonna scare em today? Global warming not working out for ya?

[fella]

Evan Seeley is a fired man walking. You don’t dis the union when the Rats are in control.

[B-Cause]

Fire them!

[Mears]

I find this quite frightening.

[kcvl]

Seeley’s OSC filings allege that union controllers operate with little oversight at the center, which coordinates high-altitude flights through the Northeast, including from JFK, La Guardia and Newark airports, and is best known for having handled the hijacked 9/11 planes.

[Frank_2001]

I thought Reagan busted the ATC union. Guess it’s time to bust ‘em again. How did they re-group? They’re like metastatic cancer......

[ml/nj]

The feds are investigating charges that New York air-traffic controllers endanger passengers by working just three hours per shift and acting like slackers -- chatting, texting and even watching movies when they should be monitoring planes, The Post has learned.

This was certainly my experience as a visitor to the pre-Reagan firing NY Center at Islip. My instrument instructor was one of the fired controllers and one evening we flew out to Islip and he showed me around; no texting back then, but lots of bridge and chess games, and guys in the TV lounge.

ML/NJ

[thecodont]

The feds are investigating charges that New York air-traffic controllers endanger passengers by working just three hours per shift and acting like slackers -- chatting, texting and even watching movies when they should be monitoring planes, The Post has learned.

This was certainly my experience as a visitor to the pre-Reagan firing NY Center at Islip. My instrument instructor was one of the fired controllers and one evening we flew out to Islip and he showed me around; no texting back then, but lots of bridge and chess games, and guys in the TV lounge.

In the movie Pushing Tin (1999) the air traffic controllers are portrayed as constantly attentive. When one of them loses concentration--and nearly causes a runway collision-- he gets pulled off the job and written up. Very strict discipline for the characters in that story. I suppose it's more like that these days?

[rawhide]

AA controller: “What did you want with that American?”

C-17 controller: “I wanted you to stop him at 20. Stop him at 21.”

The C-17 controller tells his own radar man to stop the military planes at 22,000 feet — but the AA controller thinks the direction is for him, and orders Flight 951 to that altitude, putting the planes on a crash course.

C-17 controller: “I said stop the American at 21!”

Automatic alarm inside the AA cockpit: “DESCEND, DESCEND, DESCEND!”

AA pilot: “OK, we’re following a descent.”

AA controller: “Do you have that traffic in sight?!”

AA pilot: “No, we do not!”

C-17 pilot: “This is gonna be close.”

AA pilot: “That was not good.”

[diogenes ghost]

"Lolly Gaggers" should not remain in control room, that's what break rooms are for.

Maintaining concentration with very light traffic can be difficult, it's easier with moderate to heavy traffic. So combining sectors makes sense, within reason.

PATCO's successor, NATCA, has a much tighter grasp on power within FAA than PATCO ever did. Management is more than willing to let them do as they wish, and will not support this "disgruntled whistleblower", count on it.

While automation has made the job much easier over the years, the quality of controllers has plummeted.

The TCAS system has saved many, many lives, don't leave home without it.

[ml/nj]

I should add that in honor of my visit the guys staged a mock collision within the first minute I was in the building. My instructor show me the different settings for the displays they used. When he worked (with three gofer assistants) he was guiding planes descending over PA from maybe 28,000 to 17,000 (or whatever else was in that block of airspace, but all I saw were planes going into the NYC area). His scope was set so only planes in that block showed up. He never had more than four planes at one time on the scope. This was a Thursday evening around 7 PM, presumably a time of reasonably heavy traffic. But he also showed me how he could enlarge the airspace block on his scope until it included everything from Boston to DC, from the ground up. Then there were zillions of targets. You could tell what any of them were. THIS is the view you always see on TV when they do some feature on ATC.

ML/NJ