Chicago is My Home

14
Jan

Air Traffic Controller Exodus Stifling Airline Industry in Chicago, U.S.

Author: Adam Fendelman, Category: Business, Technology, Transportation

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CHICAGO – On Aug. 26, 2006, 35-year-old airplane captain Jeffery Clay spent the evening dining with his wife and two children. After dinner, he went back to his hotel to catch some needed sleep for his 4:15 a.m. wake-up call. One last time, though, he picked up the phone and spoke to his wife. That call lasted four minutes.

Mrs. Clay would never again speak to her husband. The short evening phone call would be their last.

Captain Clay reported for work at 5:15 a.m., but at 6:07 a.m., he would be killed along with 48 other passengers and crew at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky. When Comair flight 5191 ran out of runway, the captain could be heard shouting an expletive. At the same time, the plane’s black-box recorder caught the sound of it hitting an embankment.

The crash occurred because the plane was set to take off from runway 22, but instead, the crew aligned the aircraft at runway 26. It was an unused, unlit and short runway. Though the accident in Lexington was blamed on pilot error, there was only one air traffic controller working the tower that morning.

“The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) didn’t give the controller an error. There were all these extra duties that he shouldn’t have been in charge of,” said Bob Richards, a retired air traffic controller, in an interview.

Richards – a controller at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago for 22 years – says the error may have been caught if another controller had been working in the Lexington tower. His recently released book entitled “Secrets From the Tower” chronicles a behind-the-scenes look into the life of an air traffic controller at O’Hare and details how being a controller affected his personal life.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigation of the crash revealed that the controller had cleared the plane for takeoff and then turned his back on the runway to work on administrative duties. The next time he saw Comair flight 5191 was after it had burst into flames following the crash.

Such incidents are on the rise, according to a Washington, D.C.-based Congressional watchdog agency. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on Dec. 5, 2007 concluding that runway incursions are on the rise due to a lack of appropriate technology, poor federal leadership and overworked and understaffed air traffic controllers.

The GAO reported that runway incursions where collisions were narrowly avoided suggest a “high risk” for disaster. Richards added: “Change will probably be born out of some tragedy.” On Aug. 16, 2007 at Los Angeles International Airport, two planes carrying 296 people came within 37 feet of colliding.

The study reported that the number and rate of incursions declined after reaching a peak in 2001 and remained constant for the next five years. The GAO study added: “Preliminary data for fiscal year 2007 indicate that the overall incursion rate increased during fiscal year 2007 and is nearly as high as the fiscal year 2001 peak.”

According to the FAA, 54 percent of incursions from 2003 through 2006 were caused by pilot errors, 29 percent were caused by air traffic controller errors and vehicle operators or pedestrian errors caused 17 percent.

Demand for air travel is on the rise. The GAO report requests that the FAA develop a strategy to enhance runway safety as the number of airline travelers is expected to exceed 1 billion by 2015.

Amid the GAO report, air traffic controllers are retiring in great numbers. In 2007, more than 825 controllers have retired and almost 90 percent of the 15,000 current controllers are expected to retire in the coming years. While the FAA holds its controllers to mandatory retirement at age 56, many controllers are leaving the job before that.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired 12,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike due to contract negotiations. Reagan then recruited and hired replacement controllers who are now reaching the regulatory retirement age.

Another reason for the controller exodus is an FAA-imposed labor contract that was enacted in 2006. The contract cut pay for new controllers, imposed a pay freeze on current employees and restricts controller work apparel.

John Hansman – professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (he also serves on the FAA’s Research, Engineering & Development Advisory Committee) – thinks the large retirement is coming because of frustration with contracts. He also says the FAA needs to hire 1,500 controllers a year to keep up staffing levels. From 2004 to 2005, though, the FAA only hired 14 controllers.

The FAA itself takes the opposite position and says enrollment in air traffic programs is up approximately 4 percent around the country. Still, more than 1,550 controllers have retired in fiscal year 2007. Hansman added in an interview: “Training is done by the older controllers. Now that many are retiring, what do you do? You get into a descending spiral.”

He says another problem is that is takes two to five years to train a controller. As the staffing shortages are pressuring controllers to work longer hours, this leads to fatigue. The GAO report states this as one of its major concerns for runway incursions.

“Air traffic controller fatigue continues to be a human factor’s issue affecting runway safety,” the GAO report states. “We found that as of May 2007 at least 20 percent of the controllers at 25 air traffic control facilities – including towers at several of the country’s busiest airports – were regularly working six-day weeks.”

“The facts are crystal clear: Both the NTSB and the GAO are now on record saying controller fatigue affects runway safety,” said National Air Traffic Control Association President Patrick Forray in a statement that responded to the GAO report. “Now the GAO has said fatigue is created by working overtime, which in turn is necessitated by staffing shortages.”

Richards – a retired controller – says that while he was working the O’Hare tower he knew “four controllers who had heart attacks, two controllers who got cancer and five people have heart arrhythmias”. Years ago, medical conditions would have prevented controllers from working and he says conditions are “certainly bad at O’Hare”.

The GAO report ranked O’Hare the second highest in the nation for near misses on the runway and in the skies and cites one reason as decreased safety efforts by the FAA.

“The government is reluctant to do the things they need to do to make change,” Richards said. He says O’Hare still uses a 30-year-old system of paper tracts to keep watch of planes. He added: “We have headsets that are on long, tangled up cords.”

O’Hare and Chicago controllers have been a focus since Nov. 2007 when there were two close calls involving aircraft and controllers. The first was a near collision at 25,000 feet between two jets traveling over Indiana and the second – just days later – was a near mid-air collision between two small passenger planes.

“At O’Hare, there should be 71 controllers in the tower. Right now there are only 43 and 18 of those could possibly retire,” Richards said. He added that while there are 16 trainees, its going to take two years to train them.

Peter Roskam’s 6th Congressional district includes O’Hare and the freshman U.S. representative is pushing for change at the nation’s second-busiest airport. His problem with the airport, though, is not the lack of security or flight delays. It is Chicago-area air traffic controllers.

“Any air traffic control mistake that resulted in a mid-air collision would be a tragedy not only for those on board the airplanes but also for those who live and work around the crash site. The aftermath of a mid-air collision could be devastating to my Congressional district,” Roskam wrote on Nov. 20, 2007 in a formal letter to FAA COO Henry Krakowski.

In response to the Dec. 5 GAO report, Roskam has written two more letters.

On Dec. 6, he expressed concern for his “constituents in light of the GAO report”. Roskam then “insists” that the FAA inform him on what’s being done about air traffic controller staffing levels. On Dec. 11, Roskam posted an opinion article on his Web site citing the declining staff level of controllers at O’Hare.

“I will continue to hold the FAA accountable for its performance and require such foresight. The matter is of the utmost importance to the people of the sixth Congressional district and the larger Chicagoland area,” Roskam said.

The controller staffing issue is not the only problem plaguing O’Hare. Its 12-year-old radar system (“Airport Surveillance Radar 9”) is of concern as well as it’s the only system monitoring the entirety of planes traveling over O’Hare air space. In comparison, Atlanta and Dallas operate with several radar systems.

The airport does have a new ground control radar system that keeps track of on-ground aircraft traffic.

On Dec. 15, 2006, O’Hare’s radar system was down for more than four hours. This caused major delays in Chicago as well as across the nation. Controllers at O’Hare lost in-air flights for nearly five minutes. Controllers had to use Midway Airport’s radar system in Tinley Park, Ill., which doesn’t cover all of O’Hare’s air space.

By Stephanie Huls