One, the system would perform well enough not to hurt the economy, or
Two, if needed, he was prepared to Federalize ATC. No fuss, no muss.
The facilities you mention were not a big worry for the FAA...it was Chicago, PATCO knew it, and exerted immense pressure on their members to go out and stay out, and they did a damned good job of that. Out of 479 members at ZAU, only 14 did not walk out, or made it back before the deadline. I was one of 8 non-members, naturally we all stayed.
The architect of FAA contingency plans was Bob Thorne - he and Helms spent a LOT of time at the center, briefing us and asking what we needed. We learned a LOT of stuff that was never given to the press, including the Federalizing option.
Many of the approach controls we worked with expanded greatly to take some pressure off us. This included altitude expansion, as well as lateral so as to butt up with other approaches, allowing what was called 'tower enroute', where aircraft could fly fairly long distances without needing to contact the center. This was all done to allow the center to concentrate more on the higher traffic, which is where the most commercial traffic was.
On Monday, we ran 3,000, Tuesday 3,300, Wednesday 3,600 (normal avg was about 7,000), and management would not let us go any higher, as they were concerned about us burning out over time - probably a good call, but it pissed us off.
Helms and Thorne made it very clear to us that due to that extremely high percentage we lost that we were THE facility that MUST hold up. They said that due to the recession and much lower percentages of strikers elsewhere that other facilities were not of concern as to keeping the system running.
We got TDY controllers from JAX, FTW, MEM, STL, MIA and ABQ centers. Boston and NY got a few, but nowhere what we did.
Again, NO AF at Chicago...it was tough enough training experienced enroute controllers from other facilities to get them checked out on two or three positions to make them usefull, ain't no way we could take the time to train a tower type from the ground up.
In conclusion....bailed out Reagan???...my ass.
I respect your view from a management (non-union) position.
I appreciate the hard working controllers, and trainees that stayed with the FAA.
BUT, the USAF kept the system from collapsing.
Where did "flow control" come from? The USAF controllers implemented it.
And let's not forget the trainees that picked up the ball.
Some didn't get it. Some trainees didn't see the problem.
But those that did show some spark, got the little training they needed to complete the position.
Then they got chained to that position, until we could get back to them.
I heard how the FAA worked from some of my friend that were TDY, and at that time, they didn't have time to continue their pompous over-bloated egos.
One of our TDY members arrived at a TRACON with only the facility chief and one trainee left to man that facility.
The facility chief pointed him to the D-Brite and ask him if he had worked radar from the tower before.
He advised him of his experience doing just that at Osan AB Korea, for over two hours, when a cable was cut taking out the Rapcon.
The facility chief ask him if he could handle the local and arrival positions combined in the tower.
He said he could, and he did.
Their trainee was handling ground and flight data, with very little supervision. The facility chief took the other two USAF TDY people and went down stairs to reopen the radar facility.
Other friends told similar stories of how the rating process was no more than a few minutes, and was told to read the Ops Letters and Letters of Agreement when time allowed.
Yes, the USAF rescued Reagan.
Without the USAF controllers, the system would have collapsed.