Nationwide Consolidation Continues

As of Monday, all aviation weather reports for the state of Montana will now be given by an FAA flight service office in Denver or Arizona. The Great Falls FAA Flight Service officially closed its doors as part of a nationwide consolidation.

"We've known about this since 2005, when Lockheed Martin won the bid to provide this service," said Howard Jessen, operations manager of the Great Falls office.

As ANN reported, the FAA announced in February 2005 it had selected a team headed by Lockheed Martin to provide services offered by the agency's automated flight service stations. The total evaluated cost of the five-year contract, with five additional option years, is $1.9 billion and represents estimated savings of $2.2 billion over the next ten years.

Under continued FAA oversight, Lockheed Martin will operate all flight service stations.

At one time, an FAA Flight Service office could be found at almost all airports. The agency consolidated services in the 1980s and Great Falls got the central state operation. It established an office and leased it to the federal government for $1 a year, according to the Great Falls Tribune.

Part of that agreement was the FAA's promise of more than 35 good paying jobs, but only about 20 of those jobs materialized. Community Development Director Mike Rattray calls those results "a disappointment."

"Now that the FAA is gone, we'll work with the Great Falls Development Authority and the Great Falls International Airport Authority to seek potential clients for that site," he said. "I don't think we'll have too much difficulty getting it occupied in a reasonable amount of time."

Jessen said pilots getting reports over the radio or by phone won't notice a difference.
"It will be the same phone number," he said. "A person will check in every day to give the briefings on Montana."

What is going to change is the personal service one gets with a local flight service station, said Marv Hessler, a pilot and flight instructor.

"You could stop in and talk to them, and we'll miss that," he said. "But the product they deliver will come from the same radar maps and the same weather information from computers."

As ANN also reported, Lockheed's Automated Flight Service Station (FSS) team first went live with the flight service network's Washington, DC Hub in Leesburg, VA. The companu also began using a new mission operating system called Flight Services for the 21st Century (FS21). The transition took place February 22, 2007 at 0100 EST.

Under FS21, operations previously handled by 58 FSS offices under FAA purview will instead be conducted by 16 privatized field stations, along with three hub stations. Leesburg is the first such hub to go online; locations in Prescott, AZ and Fort Worth, TX are expected to follow soon.

After learning of the privatization plans in 2005, the Montana office employees had to make other arrangements for employment. Three retired shortly after the initial announcement and three transferred to Alaska, Jessen said.

Five employees have since transferred to flight service sites in Arizona and Texas and nine others, including Jessen, retired Monday.

FMI: www.faa.gov, www.lockheedmartin.com