From The Inside, Things Look Even Worse For Air Traffic Control

I listen to a lot of ATC tapes and the latest was about the flap damage on the Southwest flight at Denver Sunday morning. When pieces fall off an airplane in flight it's a flat-out, hair-on-fire emergency. Neither the controllers nor the pilots know for sure what has been damaged and even though decisions are made quickly the incident unfolds in a frustrating slow motion.

It's so incredibly stressful and the stakes are so high, the people directly involved are instantly placed under immense pressure. Listening to today's exchange, except for the occasional moment when you can hear a little strain in the pilot's voice, the players are so calm, deliberate and rational they could be ordering burgers at a drive through.

Of course that's part of their training and it's drilled into both pilots and controllers to keep their heads when things are going to hell in a handbasket. Although the Denver incident seemed, on balance, to be  relatively minor, you can never be sure. I would challenge any of the cynics who chime in about the whining they perceive when pilots and controllers are negotiating contracts to honestly gut check themselves and see how they would do under the circumstances.

And let's not forget that incidents like this are actually relatively common for controllers. Not so much for pilots but they also have a lot more skin in the game when they do occur. For controllers, thinking on your feet and being ready to throw the rule book out the window to do what's necessary for a safe outcome is as much a part of the job as strict adherence to those rules is for the rest of the time.

Now, imagine that you've been working a mandatory 10 hours a day, six days a week for years. Sometimes the shifts are only eight hours apart. Because your workplace is so short staffed, you consider it to be dangerous and like most of your colleagues you believe an error occurring that kills hundreds of people is not just possible or even likely. You believe it is inevitable.

I've been given insight into the life of controllers recently but none of them can be quoted because both the union and the FAA keep a tight lid on public comments. But it's fair to say that the pronouncements of their leaders about staffing and the measures to improve it barely scratch the surface. The video I've put on this blog was suggested as an accurate portrayal of the current state of affairs in ATC. It's an eye-opener.

You can get a snapshot of the issue at 123atc.com, which is not an official site but is considered accurate by controllers. I'll give you my broad brush assessment. The very busiest facilities, those most crucial to the safe conduct of the most airplanes every day,  are the most severely short staffed. To make matters even worse, they take the longest to train new controllers and havehighest failure rates of new recruits. 

Although the situations at Chicago, Detroit and Miami are bad, New York TRACON is the worst. It has only 58 percent of full staffing, it takes 2.66 years to certify a new trainee and 68 percent of them fail to become certified. The situation there is so bad that despite all the noise about hiring more controllers and speeding up training, the staffing at New York TRACON is actually predicted to drop by five percent to just 53 percent in coming years. 

The discussions I've had are not with alarmists. They are with the same professional and level headed demeanor of those guys in Denver who quickly and efficiently expedited the safe outcome for those 143 people on the Southwest flight. 

That makes it all the more chilling to me. These folks are not screaming from the rooftops because that is not their way. But they are nonetheless sounding an alarm and we'd all better hope someone is listening when the news cameras have been turned off.