Sat, Jul 18, 2009
Rationale And Impacts Air Safety Studied By House
Subcommittee
The House Committee on Science and
Technology’s Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee held a
hearing Thursday to examine the FAA's efforts and rationale behind
the proposed reorganization of the NWS aviation weather services.
Members questioned witnesses about the possible impacts the NWS
reorganization could have on effectiveness of the aviation weather
service and air safety.
“This Subcommittee has frequently struggled with the
peculiar nonchalance of some government agencies in the face of
obvious dysfunction in critical programs. Today we struggle with
the equally peculiar determination by the FAA to solve a problem
that appears not to exist, to fix what ain’t broke,”
stated Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC). “The current
system for delivering aviation weather products for air traffic
control appears to work pretty well.”
For three decades, NWS has provided the FAA with aviation weather
forecast services that have appeared to meet all of the air traffic
controllers’ needs. According to the FAA, this weather
forecasting system supports a 1 trillion dollar aviation industry
and only costs 12 million dollars to operate – compared to
the 1 billion the FAA is spending on the development of
NextGen.
Since 2005, the FAA has been
pushing NWS to reorganize their aviation weather service by
consolidating the twenty-one Central Service Weather Units (CWSUs)
into one national center. Currently, the 84 forecasters working
among the 21 centers provide 16 hours of service each day.
Under the new proposal to consolidate this service, NWS would have
just 36 forecasters working out of two centers providing 24 hours
of service each day. The result would be that on any morning
or afternoon shift there would be only 8 forecasters covering the
lower 48 states as opposed to 20 on shift now.
Originally, the FAA requested this reorganization claiming that it
would lead to cost savings and improved products by NWS weather
forecasters. However, no proposal for consolidation has
demonstrated meaningful savings. Further, the air traffic
controllers who rely on these services have been found through FAA
and NWS surveys to be strong supporters of the current structure
for services and do not complain about the products they receive
from NWS. Finally, neither the FAA nor the NWS have
performance-based metrics that allow them to evaluate current
performance or compare it to any experiment at consolidated
service.
“Ultimately, the FAA has pushed for a plan to consolidate
aviation weather services that does not respond to a clearly
articulated need or problem, and would change a system that has air
traffic controllers’ full support. A shift in how
services are delivered will cost money to test and, if adopted,
will create new risks that don’t exist in the current
system. Perhaps that will result in a greater
“mass” of expertise in one place, but the down-sizing
of the staff will leave each forecaster responsible for more air
space, and deprives air traffic controllers of a forecaster to
stand over their shoulder in a weather crisis,” said
Miller.
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