Ky. Crash Revives Staffing Dispute
FAA and Air Controllers Union Wrangle Over Changes in Tower

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 11, 2006

The crash of a regional commuter jet in Kentucky last month that killed 49 of 50 people onboard has reignited a simmering conflict between the federal government and its 14,000 air traffic controllers, who say they are being spread too thin to handle growing demands on the job.

Within two days of the Aug. 27 accident, the controllers union was attacking the Federal Aviation Administration. It said the crash could have been avoided if the agency had staffed the airport's tower with a second controller that morning.

The FAA later acknowledged that it violated its own policy of having two controllers in the tower -- one to monitor the radar and the other to handle ground operations. The controller in the tower was operating on two hours of sleep between shifts and had been at work only nine hours earlier, officials have said.

The FAA has disputed suggestions that the lack of an second controller or fatigue played any role in the plane turning onto the wrong runway for takeoff. The runway was too short for the jet, which never got off the ground before slamming into a berm, a fence and trees. It burst into flames, killing everyone on board except the co-pilot, who was at the controls during the attempted takeoff.

Outside experts have said that the pilots will bear most of the responsibility for the error. Investigators will spend months examining factors that led to that mistake.

Patrick Forrey, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said another controller in the tower would probably have spotted the plane racing down the wrong runway.

He said the Lexington accident highlighted short-staffing across the country and pointed to statistics that show that the number of controllers has dropped by about 1,400 since 2003.

The FAA expects about 70 percent of the controller workforce to turn over by 2014 because many were hired after President Ronald Reagan fired thousands of striking controllers in 1981. Controllers have a mandatory retirement age of 56.

"The safety system is being jeopardized," Forrey said. "It's being degraded."

The union says many controllers will leave sooner than expected because the FAA last weekend imposed terms of a controversial new contract that cuts some types of pay and stiffened some work rules.

The contract does not reduce current controllers' salaries, but new hires will take a 30 percent pay cut versus the old deal. A controller with five years of experience will make about $90,000 under the new contract, about $23,000 less than someone under the old deal, FAA officials said.

The FAA also eliminated incentive pay that encourages controllers to take hard-to-fill jobs.

Top FAA officials said they needed the contract to better manage controllers and handle new air traffic demands while also reining in costs.

The old contract, which was reached in 1998, made it difficult for supervisors to manage facilities because it gave too much authority to the unions, which were allowed to set some workplace rules and schedules, FAA officials said.

The contract also required hiring increases during its five-year term, even though air traffic dropped after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

"It had nothing to do with traffic levels," said Marion C. Blakey, the FAA administrator. "It was a pretty arbitrary figure. We have to be more nimble."

In ditching national staffing requirements, the FAA is relying on detailed studies of operations at towers and other facilities to determine how many people are needed on different shifts, said Russell G. Chew, the agency's chief operating officer.

In the last three years, the FAA has not noticed any drop in controllers' performance, Chew said, citing statistics that show error rates have remained fairly stable.

Officials are also closely tracking the number of retirements to ensure that they have enough controllers to keep pace, Chew said.

FAA plans to hire 12,000 controllers in the next eight years. More than 3,000 applicants are in the pipeline to be hired, Chew said.

Pilots' groups said they worry that the FAA might be cutting staff too much in an effort to reduce costs. Those reductions could lead to mistakes, the pilots said.

"We are concerned today that the staffing issue is becoming more critical," said Larry Newman, chairman of the air traffic services group for the Air Line Pilots Association.