NATCA

Sometimes Saying No is Just Plane Stupid

April 22, 2013 by Robert Mark

Looking back on the decade of my life I spent working at FAA I remember one thing for certain. When someone at the agency told me “No,” the reasons were seldom clear.

“No,” might have meant something as simple as “No,” because I don’t agree with that idea or even “No,” because the idea came from me. Sometimes “No,” meant my boss didn’t know the answer and he or she didn’t want to ask anyone else. Or sometimes “No,” meant my boss actually did know the answer and it came from pretty high up so just deal with it. Of course I haven’t worked at FAA for 25 years.

As the Sunday deadline to begin controller furloughs passed last, airline passengers, business aviation operaorts and even flight training companies have no idea what’s coming next now that sequestration-induced furloughing of air traffic controllers has begun. Air traffic delays could be ugly now that FAA decided air traffic controllers are no longer essential personnel … nor are safety inspectors or the technicians that keep all the electronic gear the FAA uses up and running.

Think about that new “non-essential” ATC tag for a moment. I recall the Reason Foundation’s Bob Poole and I chatting just a few weeks ago about how ATC was considered an essential government service to people who did not support privitization. Now FAA says these folks are not really that important. The FAA never raised the issue of controllers not being essential until this week, when that move worked in their favor.

Aviation Takes Another Right to the Jaw

When FAA was asked by Airlines for America (A4A), the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and the Regional Airline Association (RAA) to take a deep breath and rethink the furloughs, perhaps the same way the FAA did (OK, they were pressured into it) the issue of contract tower closures, the agency said no, claiming they don’t have that kind of budget flexibility. We all believe that don’t we, especially when the agency somehow managed to find the cash to extend contract tower discussions until mid-June.

Of course the essential question is why aviation? That answer’s actually pretty simple.

Mr. Huerta and his team said no, because our pragmatic DOT Secretary Ray LaHood told them to say no. And of course, Mr. (did my resignation take effect yet?) LaHood takes his marching orders from the White House who has decided that aviation is the one place in the nation where the Democrat’s scolding of Republicans will have the greatest effect. [Read more…] about Sometimes Saying No is Just Plane Stupid

Labor Day 2011

September 5, 2011 by Robert Mark

In our house when I was a kid, Labor Day was always a big celebration. My father retired at age 65 from life as a union plasterer, a profession few people can even define today. My grandfather on my mom’s side, John Kikulski, was one of the first presidents of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union in Chicago in the early 1920’s so that side of the family understood union cards, worker rallies and strikes pretty well.

I carried it all down for a portion of my life as a member of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO), National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) and the AirLine Pilots Association (ALPA). Today, having run CommAvia for 16 years, being part of those groups seems as if it happened to me in another life. But much of what I learned in those years of working for someone else still sticks pretty closely with me.

Where We Came From

Labor Day began with an 1894 request from then President Grover Cleveland in an attempt to satisfy the demands for such an event from the unions and also — Cleveland hoped — to help end a crushing strike against the Pullman Railway Company in Chicago. He eventually sent 12,000 Army troops to Chicago to help squash the strike, which led to the death of two-dozen workers. Imagine a Democratic president in the U.S. trying something like that today should ALPA walk out at United Airlines.

Looking at the state of the economy here in the U.S. today though, makes me realize that many of the same issues labor fought for a hundred years ago may have fallen to the sidelines for awhile, but are still around if anyone chooses to notice.

In the early 1900’s, work life in the United States was tough, with people struggling to make ends meet, while the controllers of capital had the easy life. Some thought the analogy of famous CEOs stealing the food right out of the mouths of hungry workers and their families captured the sentiments pretty well, hence the robber baron label attached to the George Pullmans, John Rockefellers and the J.P. Morgans of the time.

Today, much is the same here in the states, although we must clearly acknowledge that the life of the average working stiff is not much better in other parts of the world either. Hundreds of American companies have shipped tens of thousands of jobs overseas to take advantage of cheaper labor in the past few decades, something that in a capitalist society they are perfectly free to do of course. Those cost-cutting measures have kept millions of Americans out of the labor pool as companies have stashed billions of dollars in cash in the kitty for a rainy day, unwilling to reinvest that cash here in the U.S. — as in hiring more employees. [Read more…] about Labor Day 2011

Air Traffic Control: Over-Controlling

December 20, 2010 by Robert Mark

The service delivered by some ATC facilities today is just not what it used to be in the old days before the PATCO strike. There, I said it.

Having been around in the old days — like the 70s – when traffic at most towers was insane by today’s standards, I think I have some solid data to measure against.

When I say service is not today what it used to be though, I don’t mean at the nation’s busy facilities. There’s no way controllers at JFK, ORD, ATL or LAX could push out as many airplanes per hour as they do unless they were operating with plenty of adrenalin in their system. Think shoot the gap, which translates into never wasting 60 seconds of airspace when you can put an airplane into it. Those kinds of results come from superb mentors teaching recruits how it’s done.

My focus here is on the less busy VFR towers, specifically the ones in the Chicago area where I still fly some 200 hours each year, airports like Chicago Executive (KPWK), Waukegan (KUGN), Kenosha (KENW) and DuPage (KDPA). Kenosha and Waukegan are contract towers run by a private company where the controllers are not NATCA members.

My gripe is that no one seems to be training these controllers how to move traffic … quickly. Sure being safe is important to the best ATC system in the world, but VFR towers should be delivering efficiency too.

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