Nationwide Consolidation Continues
As of Monday, all aviation weather
reports for the state of Montana will now be given by an FAA flight
service office in Denver or Arizona. The Great Falls FAA Flight
Service officially closed its doors as part of a nationwide
consolidation.
"We've known about this since 2005, when Lockheed Martin won the
bid to provide this service," said Howard Jessen, operations
manager of the Great Falls office.
As ANN reported, the FAA
announced in February 2005 it had selected a team headed by
Lockheed Martin to provide services offered by the agency's
automated flight service stations. The total evaluated cost of the
five-year contract, with five additional option years, is $1.9
billion and represents estimated savings of $2.2 billion over the
next ten years.
Under continued FAA oversight, Lockheed Martin will operate all
flight service stations.
At one time, an FAA Flight Service office could be found at
almost all airports. The agency consolidated services in the 1980s
and Great Falls got the central state operation. It established an
office and leased it to the federal government for $1 a year,
according to the Great Falls Tribune.
Part of that agreement was the FAA's promise of more than 35
good paying jobs, but only about 20 of those jobs materialized.
Community Development Director Mike Rattray calls those results "a
disappointment."
"Now that the FAA is gone, we'll work with the Great Falls
Development Authority and the Great Falls International Airport
Authority to seek potential clients for that site," he said. "I
don't think we'll have too much difficulty getting it occupied in a
reasonable amount of time."
Jessen said pilots getting reports over the radio or by phone
won't notice a difference.
"It will be the same phone number," he said. "A person will check
in every day to give the briefings on Montana."
What is going to change is the personal service one gets with a
local flight service station, said Marv Hessler, a pilot and flight
instructor.
"You could stop in and talk to them, and we'll miss that," he
said. "But the product they deliver will come from the same radar
maps and the same weather information from computers."
As ANN also reported,
Lockheed's Automated Flight Service Station (FSS) team first went
live with the flight service network's Washington, DC Hub in
Leesburg, VA. The companu also began using a new mission operating
system called Flight Services for the 21st Century (FS21). The
transition took place February 22, 2007 at 0100 EST.
Under FS21, operations previously handled by 58 FSS offices
under FAA purview will instead be conducted by 16 privatized field
stations, along with three hub stations. Leesburg is the first such
hub to go online; locations in Prescott, AZ and Fort Worth, TX are
expected to follow soon.
After learning of the privatization plans in 2005, the Montana
office employees had to make other arrangements for employment.
Three retired shortly after the initial announcement and three
transferred to Alaska, Jessen said.
Five employees have since transferred to flight service sites in
Arizona and Texas and nine others, including Jessen, retired
Monday.