Says FAA Hasn't Complied With NTSB's 2007 Recommendations

Claiming the FAA has continued to refuse to comply with the National Transportation Safety Board's April 2007 recommendations to work with controllers on fatigue issues, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association announced Monday its own plans to develop a "fatigue management system."

NATCA President Patrick Forrey adds the union will also participate in the FAA's "Aviation Fatigue Management Symposium," which kicks off Tuesday... despite it being, in his words, "nothing more than another FAA publicity stunt, designed to show an appearance of concern for this issue.

"Apparently, the FAA now decides that an industry-wide symposium is needed when they can't even address their own employee fatigue issues well after a year from being asked by the NTSB," Forrey said. "In fact, the agency has contributed to the fatigue problem by worsening the controller staffing crisis and imposing work rules on controllers in September 2006 that mandated longer work periods and fewer rest opportunities and even prohibited controllers from calling in sick due to fatigue."

NATCA is locked in a highly-vitriolic, two-year battle with the FAA over a new contract.

As ANN reported last week, the NTSB recommended the FAA develop a fatigue management system for all classes of operators that it regulates. NATCA says it would like the NTSB to require the FAA to develop a system for air traffic controllers, and other FAA employees as well. To that end, NATCA will immediately launch work on a fatigue management system that will contain a variety of policies and countermeasures that are all focused on decreasing the likelihood of fatigue in the workplace.

Three NATCA facility representatives chronicled the relationship between understaffing and fatigue last Wednesday at a House Aviation Subcommittee hearing. One of them, Melvin Davis from Southern California Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) -- the busiest terminal radar facility in the country -- testified that overtime mandated by FAA managers desperate to cover for understaffing had risen the past four years, from $250,000 spent to $4 million, greatly worsening the fatigue problem. "Every day I sit next to controllers who show the signs of accumulated fatigue," he said. "The stress and strain of the extended overtime and increased demand manifests itself in visible physical changes. There are constant bags under our eyes."

"The FAA holding a symposium on fatigue is like the big oil companies holding a symposium on high gas prices," Forrey concludes. "While not a crisis entirely of its own making, the FAA must be held accountable for its failed management and policy decisions and brutally stressful, understaffed and exhausting working conditions that have caused the NTSB to add controller fatigue to its list of most important safety concerns."

FMI: www.natca.org, www.faa.gov