Air Traffic Control: Be Careful Out There

• Share

(5 of 11)

Such self-protective steps presumably are rare, but there is little doubt that the nation's air controllers are straining to handle their workload. A survey by the Government's General Accounting Office last March produced some disturbing findings: an overwhelming 91% of controllers complained that the system does not have enough qualified controllers, 70% reported that they handle more traffic in peak periods than they should be required to accept, 69% claimed that their heavy workloads adversely affect air safety. In the fiscal year before the 1981 strike, controllers put in 377,000 hours of overtime; in 1985 they worked an extra 908,000 hours.

Moreover, the controllers are not optimistic about the immediate future. More than half rated the quality of training for new controllers as either "less than adequate" or "poor." The GAO discovered that the top of the controller hierarchy is aging and restive. Of 450 supervisors in the survey, 75% said they hope to retire within a year. "A lot of us are tired, overworked, stressed and demoralized," explained one veteran.

Some of the rank-and-file controllers have started procedures to establish a new union to replace PATCO, which was smashed in the 1981 strike. The Administration's dismissal of 11,500 strikers, although politically popular, is still hotly argued from a safety standpoint. Claims Ray Brown, an ALPA executive and air-safety consultant, about the Administration: "Instead of listening to the message, it killed the messenger. Now the message has resurfaced because the new people are expressing the same problems."

One example of the manpower problem is the situation at the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center in Aurora, Ill., which handles an airspace that includes O'Hare, one of the world's busiest airports. On paper, the center has more controllers than its authorized strength of 350. But only 183 have reached full-performance-level status. Where it was once standard for controllers to be at their positions for only four of the eight hours in a shift, the norm at Aurora is now six. Coupled with mandatory overtime, this pace, contends one Aurora controller, "is burning most of us out."

! The ATC computer systems, many of them 20 years old, are also burning out. The Aurora control center lost a backup computer on Aug. 3, and while it was being repaired, the main computer went down for nearly four minutes on Aug. 4 and for an hour on Aug. 5. A control center in Albuquerque was knocked out for 40 minutes on Nov. 6. The busy Washington center lost all its radar and computers for 20 minutes on Nov. 29. When this happens, pilots have no choice but to fall back on "see and avoid" flying practices. But that is sometimes difficult to do in today's instrument-filled "glass cockpits," which require pilots to keep their heads down much of the time. Flights are diverted to open airports and long delays develop. At the New York area radar facility on Long Island -- which controls Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark airports -- one controller says, there is "some sort of equipment breakdown two or three times a month" during which "everybody scrambles into high gear."