Reduced Staffing Meant Only One Tech On Duty, Instead Of
Two
Why did air traffic controllers lose radar coverage over
southern California last summer?
Technicians at the Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC)in
Palmdale say equipment problems that caused the traffic delays
weren't their fault. They told the Associated Press the FAA reduced
staffing at the center from two technicians to one, forcing them to
postpone maintenance on backup equipment which would have prevented
the foul-up.
"It does take us longer to do the maintenance because of the
lack of staffing," said Tony Gilmore, a technician and union
representative at Palmdale ARTCC, which handles high-altitude
flights over Southern California and much of Nevada and
Arizona.
FAA officials deny those claims, with Administrator Marion
Blakey saying it was "a remarkable piece of bad luck" that led to
the outage at Palmdale, and an unrelated problem with the ILS at
Los Angeles International three weeks later.
"All you can do is focus intently to address each and every one
of them," Blakey told the Los Angeles Times. "It's not as though
this points to a bigger problem."
The FAA has spent a great deal of time lately fielding questions
about staffing and equipment upgrades. Members of congress
questioned the FAA about staffing following the tragedy in
Lexington this summer. They wondered if another controller on duty
might have prevented Comair flight 5191 from attempting takeoff
from the wrong runway.
Representatives of the Professional Airways Systems Specialists
-- the union representing FAA technicians -- say the FAA is so
worried about upgrading... it isn't properly maintaining equipment
currently in use.
"There's so much pressure on them to show that they're
modernizing the system to increase capacity that they're
marginalizing the importance of keeping the infrastructure they
have now," said PASS vice-president Ray Baggett.
Logs kept at Palmdale corroborate the technician's claims of
deferring maintenance. And the FAA has since replaced the failed
component which caused all the trouble... at Palmdale, as well as
other facilities that use the same equipment.
Meanwhile, the FAA said it is continuing its investigation into
the matter... while also developing an long-term plan to make the
system better prepared to handle power surges -- the malady that turned the lights out in
Palmdale last July.