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FAA putting untrained controllers at ZMA according to NATCA

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  • FAA putting untrained controllers at ZMA according to NATCA

    Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4743768&EDATE=

    This can't be good anyway you look at it.

  • #2
    Originally posted by Foxtrot
    Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4743768&EDATE=

    This can't be good anyway you look at it.
    Well, if you're the FAA, you understand that all you have to do is rebaseline "good"...

    Comment


    • #3
      We need to consider the source and the agenda associated with it. I am not opposed to OJT (On the Job Training) but certifying a controller requires classroom instruction and testing. A maximum time limit should be in place to insure certification is accomplished in a timely manner.
      Don
      Standard practice for managers around the world:
      Ready - Fire - Aim! DAMN! Missed again!

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Foxtrot
        Source: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/st...4743768&EDATE=

        This can't be good anyway you look at it.
        It's not good, but it's not necessarily "bad" other than ZMA wasted money hiring more trainees/developmentals than they have capacity to train. The problem is there are only so many control positions active, and only so many possible training hours in the day... and only so many OJT instructors who also have to maintain proficiency on the positions themselves.

        There's also the deeper issue though of how the FAA let it get this bad system-wide, since they let the training pipeline dry up until recently and it takes several years on average to get certified. In the worst case over the next couple years facilities may have to combine normally separate positions and cut traffic back because we just don't have the staffing. (The airlines may actually like that though because they can get rid of unprofitable routes -- sort of what happened after the '81 strike).

        Comment


        • #5
          We need to consider the source and the agenda associated with it.
          Would that be the same agenda that led NATCA, six or eight, or more, years ago, to begin warning of today's staffing crisis? And while we're on the topic of agendas, what was the agenda of the administration, when they only hired 14 people to replace the 500-some controllers that retired in back 2004?

          Not quite on topic, but interesting nevertheless, is the question of how much of that scarce training time will be wasted on candidates who will fail to certify anyway. Here's a tidbit from the FAA's 10 year hiring plan, dated 2005:


          We’re taking action to increase hiring efficiency. By improving the screening process, a nine-week screen has been reduced to an eight-hour test. Previously, screening cost the FAA about $10,000 per candidate, and the agency’s air traffic control training academy experienced a 57 percent pass rate. Today, it costs the agency about $800 per candidate to administer the test. The new screening test combined with the academy’s multi-path training referenced in Chapter 7 has reduced the failure rate for academy training to less than 5 percent, saving the agency money and establishing a more encouraging process for new recruits.

          Don, you're a pilot and a mechanic. What would you think if the engineers said, as a cost saving and efficiency measure, they could dramatically increase fuel delivery to your engine by eliminating the fuel filter in favor of pouring the fuel through a piece of old window screen before dispensing it into your tank?

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Digger
            Would that be the same agenda that led NATCA, six or eight, or more, years ago, to begin warning of today's staffing crisis? And while we're on the topic of agendas, what was the agenda of the administration, when they only hired 14 people to replace the 500-some controllers that retired in back 2004?
            Yes that's him.

            Not quite on topic, but interesting nevertheless, is the question of how much of that scarce training time will be wasted on candidates who will fail to certify anyway. Here's a tidbit from the FAA's 10 year hiring plan, dated 2005:
            That is always an issue.

            Don, you're a pilot and a mechanic. What would you think if the engineers said, as a cost saving and efficiency measure, they could dramatically increase fuel delivery to your engine by eliminating the fuel filter in favor of pouring the fuel through a piece of old window screen before dispensing it into your tank?
            I'm also an engineer. We fight that battle daily. It isn't the engineers suggesting it, it's the bean counters.

            The ATC union has an agenda. Every group has one. Both the union and FAA's agenda's must be considered when reading comments. One side says the sky is falling, the other insists everything is fine. Both sides have reported facts in the best possible light for their agenda. Neither one is correct,
            Don
            Standard practice for managers around the world:
            Ready - Fire - Aim! DAMN! Missed again!

            Comment


            • #7
              Digger, by bolding that text you seem to imply the old 9 week non-radar screening was better. I've actually been through the process and the old way of doing things was worse than the AT-SAT test they do now. The old "9 week" screen actually consisted of 8 weeks to teach you how to take a non-radar test, all for only about 5 hours of actual testing in the final week ("graded problems"). It required you to quit your job and move to Oklahoma city for those two months just for that 5 hour test, that you may or may not pass. Now they do the actual screening up front instead of two months into it and you don't have to quit your job.

              Also the old way of doing things was nobody got fired if they just didn't have what it took -- it was called the "train to succeed" doctrine. If someone couldn't certify they'd keep resetting the training hours and start over. Year after year. Then send them to another facility and try again there. Then another facility, and another and another until the person eventually retired. Now however if someone doesn't certify they just get fired. I think that's more efficient and more fair to developmentals to get them back in their old career rather than string them along at the lowest pay grade until their old job skills are out of date and they have no other options.

              The problem is not the lack of or quality of new hires, it's the lack of instructors and positions to train them on. "Mistakes were made" in staffing but we'll get through it eventually I'm sure.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by ATCBob
                Digger, by bolding that text you seem to imply the old 9 week non-radar screening was better. I've actually been through the process and the old way of doing things was worse than the AT-SAT test they do now. The old "9 week" screen actually consisted of 8 weeks to teach you how to take a non-radar test, all for only about 5 hours of actual testing in the final week ("graded problems"). It required you to quit your job and move to Oklahoma city for those two months just for that 5 hour test, that you may or may not pass. Now they do the actual screening up front instead of two months into it and you don't have to quit your job.

                Also the old way of doing things was nobody got fired if they just didn't have what it took -- it was called the "train to succeed" doctrine. If someone couldn't certify they'd keep resetting the training hours and start over. Year after year. Then send them to another facility and try again there. Then another facility, and another and another until the person eventually retired. Now however if someone doesn't certify they just get fired. I think that's more efficient and more fair to developmentals to get them back in their old career rather than string them along at the lowest pay grade until their old job skills are out of date and they have no other options.

                The problem is not the lack of or quality of new hires, it's the lack of instructors and positions to train them on. "Mistakes were made" in staffing but we'll get through it eventually I'm sure.
                So, let me get this straight...

                You're the FAA. You tell hopeful candidates that the only way they can be hired is to spend two to four years and 50 or 100 thousand bucks to get a CTI degree, which doesn't translate very well into any other field; some of them you put directly into the most challenging facilities because that's where you're shortest of bodies (through nobody's fault but your own), and when they fail to check out, it's "See, ya. Have a nice day." (Which doesn't even address the fact that when you find you can't fill seats at the academy fast enough you start hiring, off the street, people who've responded to help wanted ads on Craigslist.) You spend time at the facilities, distracting CPCs from working live traffic, to do the training that either certifies or washes out these developmentals, when you're so short staffed that most of the developmentals on your payroll can't get training time anyway. Now, instead of 90%+ of the people that passed the 9-week screen and found their way into the facilities eventually certifying, you send 95% of everybody to the facilities, and pay their wages for a couple of years until you eventually fire 40% of them.

                You're right. That's much more fair and efficient.

                Sheesh. What was I thinking?


                Originally posted by Dmmoore
                I'm also an engineer. We fight that battle daily. It isn't the engineers suggesting it, it's the bean counters.
                After posting that analogy, I considered that it might have been more appropriate to use "bean counters" in place of "engineers", but I had more important things to do than change it. My point was that the suggestion was being made by somebody removed from the immediacy of the situation, and its possibly dire consequences


                Originally posted by Dmmoore
                The ATC union has an agenda. Every group has one. Both the union and FAA's agenda's must be considered when reading comments. One side says the sky is falling, the other insists everything is fine. Both sides have reported facts in the best possible light for their agenda. Neither one is correct,
                Granted. I assume that, since you didn't say it, you believe that it goes without saying, that the union's agenda is solely to promote the interests of itself and its members, and that those interests are solely related to pay and working conditions. That's what unions are for, right? They only harp about safety cause it sounds good.

                You did avoid addressing the one question that I asked though--what was driving the Administration's agenda when they allowed the situation to become so critical, and did nothing to get the trainees in the pipeline in a timely fashion?

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Digger
                  So, let me get this straight...

                  You're the FAA. You tell hopeful candidates that the only way they can be hired is to spend two to four years and 50 or 100 thousand bucks to get a CTI degree, which doesn't translate very well into any other field; some of them you put directly into the most challenging facilities because that's where you're shortest of bodies (through nobody's fault but your own), and when they fail to check out, it's "See, ya. Have a nice day." (Which doesn't even address the fact that when you find you can't fill seats at the academy fast enough you start hiring, off the street, people who've responded to help wanted ads on Craigslist.) You spend time at the facilities, distracting CPCs from working live traffic, to do the training that either certifies or washes out these developmentals, when you're so short staffed that most of the developmentals on your payroll can't get training time anyway. Now, instead of 90%+ of the people that passed the 9-week screen and found their way into the facilities eventually certifying, you send 95% of everybody to the facilities, and pay their wages for a couple of years until you eventually fire 40% of them.

                  You're right. That's much more fair and efficient.

                  Sheesh. What was I thinking?
                  Digger, that's just not how it works. Firstly, nobody has to go to "CTI" colleges, and it isn't a degree but just a couple classes. That's a good option for kids that are going to college anyway -- the idea is they might as well take an approved class in aviation basics while they're there and be allowed to skip the 5 week training class at the academy. Or you can get hired off the streets same as always and take the academy class same as before.

                  Secondly, if you are clearly unable to get certified as a controller, unfortunately yes we do now say "See, ya. Have a nice day." ATC isn't something you can put in the hands of people who just don't "get it." It's a demanding job with little room for error. We have found it is more efficient to let training failures go because if you just bounce the person around different facilities like was the policy before, you end up paying them not to work on top of paying an OJTI their full salary to babysit them full time. That's on top of the "unfairness" to the developmental's career as I pointed out before. That old way IS grossly inefficient.

                  Thirdly to imply OJT "distracts CPC's from working full time" is sort of true technically but it's not simply a policy issue. Unfortunately in ATC you cannot learn the nuances of each position at each facility through classroom instruction then just let the person loose on his own. The job is too fast paced and safety-critical for that. An OJT instructor is foremost a safety overseer while the trainee learns the position and naturally stumbles along the way. OJTI's are literally plugged in with the student, fully responsible for the operation of the position, and can and do override transmissions and immediately correct mistakes. You can't do away with that or nobody new will ever certify.

                  Fourthly your stats are misleading -- the reason why "90+%" out of the old academy weren't washed out for failure to certify is because the policy was simply not to wash anybody out for failing to certify. Nor have we fired 40% of new hirees as you claim -- it's currently well under 10% though I don't have the source handy -- the 30% of new hirees have actually been quitting before they even get trained. They didn't wash out, they didn't get fired, they quit. That is the issue here, and the problem. It has nothing to do with what's taught at the academy, or not taught -- it's new hires being frustrated at the backlog and their marginal pay while they wait.

                  Originally posted by Digger
                  You did avoid addressing the one question that I asked though--what was driving the Administration's agenda when they allowed the situation to become so critical, and did nothing to get the trainees in the pipeline in a timely fashion?
                  I can maybe answer that because I was at headquarters at the time and learned a whole lot about the politics. Right after 9/11, NATCA truly (I feel) exploited the patriotic fervor in congress to get them to mandate our 75% salary boosts. As an FAA employee of course I loved it although as a taxpayer I was outraged ($180K a year to sit around and do what?!), and so was congress when they froze pay increases and wouldn't fund new hiring after the FAA's budget needs subsequently went haywire (possibly also because they had a war to finance and that was a quick way to manage costs with no immediate effects).

                  The consequence of the pay freeze though meant nobody under the old pay scale moves to busier facilities -- why would they, since that means uprooting your family, having to do more work and suffer a higher cost of living, for no increase in pay? The only way to staff busy facilities now is to hire straight out of the academy since they're on the new lower pay scale. That's why a few kids are going straight to Atlanta and ORD and washing out (although nobody's actually fired for washing out of a level 12... a level 10 maybe, but not 12).

                  So "mistakes were made" but you could just as easily blame NATCA as the FAA as Congress. Rather than dwell on that it's more productive for us to focus on the problems and work to solve them. We're trying to get people certified and turned into OJTI's themselves as efficiently as possible in order to meet the attrition we're facing from retirements. NATCA's tired old hyperbole doesn't help anything... they have very little credibility left among controllers or management, anyway.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Digger
                    After posting that analogy, I considered that it might have been more appropriate to use "bean counters" in place of "engineers", but I had more important things to do than change it. My point was that the suggestion was being made by somebody removed from the immediacy of the situation, and its possibly dire consequences.
                    Yes but pick a group that "IS" removed from the dire concquences rather than one directly in the middle of them

                    Granted. I assume that, since you didn't say it, you believe that it goes without saying, that the union's agenda is solely to promote the interests of itself and its members, and that those interests are solely related to pay and working conditions. That's what unions are for, right? They only harp about safety cause it sounds good.
                    Solely? No. But it is a LARGE part of the agenda.

                    You did avoid addressing the one question that I asked though--what was driving the Administration's agenda when they allowed the situation to become so critical, and did nothing to get the trainees in the pipeline in a timely fashion?
                    I don't have the contacts in Georges office to be of any assistance.
                    Don
                    Standard practice for managers around the world:
                    Ready - Fire - Aim! DAMN! Missed again!

                    Comment

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