Controllers Say Agency Not Ready For Mass Retirements

Remember all those controllers who were hired by the FAA in the wake of the PATCO strike and subsequent lock-out? A vast number of them are getting ready to retire soon and the FAA is nowhere near ready to take up the slack.

So says Rick Thompson, a NATCA regional vice president. He says, unless the FAA does something, air traffic in Alaska will soon be in chaos.

It's a chorus NATCA and others have sung a lot lately. And with reason -- almost half of the nation's air traffic controllers are eligible to retire over the next nine years. That's triple the number who've left that nation's towers and control centers in all of the past eight years.

But the FAA doesn't appear to agree with Thompson about the severity of the problem. Crisis, he says? What crisis?

"If they choose to say a crisis, that's up to them," said Mike Fergus, who speaks for the FAA's Mountain Region Office. "We should not expect to see a large volume of retirement in the first year."

Fergus says the FAA is thinking about upping the mandatory retirement age for controllers. But Thompson is critical of that idea.

"Prolonging the inevitable is simply not a solution," he said.

FAA Administrator Marion Blakey promises the government will have a plan to address the shortage by December.

FMI: www.faa.gov