ATC'ers Must File Vacation Time To Leave Tower For Lunch

When most of us break for lunch at work, the question is usually " eat in or go out?" For Denver air traffic controllers the question is more like: "eat in, or file for vacation leave?"

New rules imposed on the nation's air traffic controllers by the FAA the day after Labor Day, require all controllers to stay inside the tower for their entire eight hour shift, says the Denver Post.

School kids know this concept as the closed campus.

The president of the Denver unit of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, Michael Coulter, told the Post, "We call the tower the 'lockdown cafe'. We're under house arrest for eight hours."

It used to be controllers could take a short break away from the tower and grab a bite at one of the fine airport eateries at the terminal food court. The stroll to clear their heads was called  the "terminal walk".

The FAA says the new rules are being enforced to comply with the current  labor contract, where the controllers are on duty for eight hours straight. The FAA had attempted to change the working day to 8.5 hours, with an unpaid lunch break.

The local FAA tower manager, Robert Fletcher said, "We compensate them to be on-site and immediately recallable. Controllers are getting paid to eat."

The controllers believe they are being punished for refusing to accept the new shift times and chafe at the directive that requires them to use up their personal time or vacation leave just to step outside the control tower for a break. 

Besides not being able to step away from work, the controllers in Denver complain they have to pass through security checkpoints to get to the tower. They say it's very difficult to bring in their own packed lunches -- especially if there's gravy involved -- because of the TSA ban against liquids or gels.

The FAA chief responds they can bring their lunches to a special security lunchroom in a non-public area near the tower, but Coulter says that a number of his controllers have had everything in their lunchboxes confiscated by the TSA.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.tsa.gov