GAO Says System is Improved, Flawed

There has been a lot of banter going back and forth about the safety of ATC personnel.

It's not that any are worried for their own security; it's that the controllers' unions (particularly NATCA) and the FAA disagree over just how safe the different tower operators are, in their everyday actions.

The GAO, at the behest of Rep. James Oberstar (D-8-MN), undertook to see if there were any data that would indicate, one way or the other, if the unions' claims were true.

As it turns out, the FAA has been collecting data for years; it has improved its data collection methods and the "grading" system for incident severity... and the GAO can't make heads or tails of any of it.

What it comes down to, is this: "Comparisons of operational errors among types of air traffic control facilities, such as FAA-staffed facilities versus contractor-staffed facilities, cannot be used alone to provide valid conclusions about safety due to three factors that we identified based on standard methodological practices and our understanding of FAA’s data."

Thus, both sides will use this report to their best advantage. Don't take our word, though; look at the report itself!

FMI: www.gao.gov/new.items/d031175r.pdf