Says Staffing Levels Have Dropped For Third Consecutive Year

Citing the FAA Administrator's Fact Book in a press release today, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) says controller staffing levels have dropped for the third straight year, to a new low of 14,206.

This, says NATCA, is despite the FAA's public claims it hired more controllers than it lost to retirement and other factors over the past year. NATCA says the number of controllers working at the FAA's 300-plus facilities dropped from 14,227 at the end of fiscal year 2005 to 14,206 in fiscal year 2006. The figures are listed as current as of October 31, 2006, which would include hiring and attrition statistics a full month into the current fiscal year.

NATCA says controller staffing reached 15,386 as recently as September 2003, but a year later, in October 2004, the FAA reported the number had fallen to 14,736. The controller's union attributes this to a growing "retirement wave" it's warned of for the past few years.

"This is the most definitive proof yet, from the FAA's own reported figures, that the agency simply cannot get ahead of the retirement wave, no matter how many people they say they are hiring and trying to rush into the system," NATCA President Patrick Forrey said. "The agency is now rapidly losing its most veteran, experienced controllers - the people who it was counting on to train its new generation of controllers - at a far higher rate than it expected and is continuing to force more veterans to retire early with its demoralizing, distracting and authoritarian imposed work rules."

NATCA says veteran controllers are currently retiring at a rate of more than three per day since October 1st. It says controller retirements last year exceeded FAA projections by 57 percent. The association warns if the pace continues, FY07 retirements will exceed this year's FAA projection of 643 by Memorial Day -- four months before the end of the fiscal year. NATCA says the FAA has missed its retirement projections for three straight fiscal years, by an increasing margin each year.

Controllers can retire before the mandatory age of 56 if they have met one of two criteria: Reach age 50 and have 20 years of service; or have 25 years of service at any age.

"Rather than 'staffing to traffic' as the FAA states publicly is its new mission, the agency appears to be following a new policy; 'staffing to budget,'" Forrey said. "And the scary part is no amount of new hires the agency has made over the past two years or will make over the next 2-4 years is going to fix the current staffing problem. That's because it takes 2-4 years to train a new controller before that professional is fully certified.

"That gap, from the day a veteran controller retires to the day their replacement reaches full certification level, is where we have the most reason to worry about the agency's continued ability to maintain the margin of safety in the system by ensuring there is redundancy. Our greatest challenge today, besides the distraction of the imposed work rules, is maintaining the margin of safety knowing the level of redundancy has been whittled away to its bare minimum. We need more eyes watching the skies."

FMI: www.natca.org