Says FAA Paid Record O/T To Cover Staffing Shortages

The National Air Traffic Controller's Association tells ANN the FAA was forced to spend roughly $865,000 in overtime at the Atlanta Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility, from October 2006 to March 2007, due to a continuing shortage of qualified personnel to staff the facility.

NATCA says that is nearly seven times the amount of overtime spent in the same six-month period in 2005-06, and directly correlates with the lack of controllers at the TRACON.

There are 71 fully certified controllers currently on board, according to the union, but four are not working due to long-term medical conditions. Six of these veteran controllers are eligible to retire by the end of this year. There are 22 trainees in the facility, but none of them will be fully trained and able to work traffic before the end of this year.

Five of these trainees are what the FAA calls "certified professional controllers in training," (CPCIT) meaning they have prior experience as fully trained controllers at other facilities before transferring to Atlanta TRACON, where they are now forced to re-certify.

NATCA also reports FAA officials have also decided, beginning June 24, to close one large sector of Atlanta airspace one hour early every night and a second large sector of airspace two hours early every night due to staffing shortages... which the agency is now calling a "resource management problem," according to a recent agency memo.

Until March, the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association agreed there should be 104 controllers on staff to safely and efficiently run the operation at Atlanta TRACON. The FAA now states a new "range" of 80-98 controllers is acceptable to staff the facility... but has failed to produce any documentation or studies to show how it arrived at this range and why it needed fewer controllers to handle what has been a four-fold increase in recent years in the amount of airspace that Atlanta TRACON controllers are responsible for.

"The FAA likes to say they are 'staffing to traffic,' but we have taken on hundreds of square miles of airspace in our coverage area and yet have less staffing now than when we were responsible for a smaller amount of airspace" said Jim Allerdice, NATCA representative for the Atlanta TRACON.

Speaking of traffic, NATCA also reports there is more of it than ever.

On Wednesday, Atlanta TRACON controllers worked with Atlanta Tower personnel to set a record by moving 3,096 flights into and out of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. At its peak, controllers handled 207 flights in one hour... a "staggering" total, the union says, that left controllers pushed to their physical and mental limits.

At least 70 percent of the controllers are working six-day weeks or 10-hour days (two hours of overtime on top of regular eight-hour day) to cover the demand; recently, controllers have also had to deal with strong thunderstorms in their airspace.

"We were already working six-day weeks and 10-hour days and then you throw the thunderstorms on top of that and you end up with extremely stressful and heavy, complex traffic periods," Allerdice said. "Having to do that for extended periods of time wears on you."

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