NATCA Bookshelf

NIW Today | 39 cut nearly $493 million from the FAA's Operations & Maintenance budget without regard for the safety or efficiency of the NAS. The law has had a negative effect on the NAS. For example, delayed preventative maintenance means engineers and technicians operate on a "fix-on-fail" policy, forcing them to wait until equipment breaks before replacing it. The FAA suspended hiring and closed its training Academy due to sequestration, greatly exacerbating the staffing crisis. Until Congress finds a way to resolve sequestration, modify the FAA's funding stream, or simply exempt the FAA from this draconian fiscal policy, the NAS will continue to fall further behind on safety, efficiency, and capacity. 2013 SEQUESTRATION FURLOUGHS AND THREATENED TOWER CLOSURES In April 2013, sequestration forced the FAA to furlough every employee, including air traffic controllers, and considered closing towers in order to achieve the mandated spending cuts. These furloughs led to significant flight delays: during the week of April 21-27, 2013, delays jumped to 13,694, nearly triple the 5,103 delays in the same week of 2012 and the 5,110 delays in 2014. The FAA also threatened to simply close many low-level towers in order to comply with sequestration. NATCA immediately focused on ending the furloughs and a week after the furloughs began, Congress acted by passing, and the President signed into law, the Reducing Flight Delays Act of 2013. This bill authorized the Secretary of Transportation to transfer $253 million from other FAA accounts to the FAA's operations account in order to prevent reduced operations and reduced staffing of the FAA for the remainder of the fiscal year. 2013 FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN By September 2013, the end of FY 2013, Congress still had not passed appropriations bills to fund the government for FY 2014. On Oct. 1, the government was forced to shut down for 16 days (at that time the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history), shuttering much of the FAA along with it, which resulted in more furloughs to FAA employees. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) estimates that these furloughs cost the government a total of $2.5 billion. 2018 GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS In early 2018, Congress failed — on two separate occasions — to enact appropriations legislation and the government was shut down for three days between Jan. 20-22, and then again on Feb. 9. On March 23, Congress narrowly avoided its third federal government shutdown in a two-month period when it passed an omnibus spending package that funded the government and also extended FAA authorization through Sept. 30, 2018. Prior to that, Congress was on its fifth consecutive CR and fifth consecutive extension to FAA authorization. 35-DAY GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN The longest government shutdown in U.S. history eroded the critical layers necessary to support and maintain the safety of the system, which supports over 70,000 flights and over 2 million passengers every day. We work hard to mitigate distractions and reduce fatigue in our workforce, and the shutdown increased fatigue and inserted unnecessary distractions and thoughts into controllers' heads while they were working airplanes.The pressure and the extra stress that this shutdown inserted into the NAS was intense. Controllers were distracted because they were thinking about the shutdown and how they would pay their mortgages, car payments, and for food and other household expenses. To keep income coming in and take care of their families, in addition to performing their regular stressful duties of directing traffic, some controllers also were driving an Uber or Lyft or waiting tables before and after their FAA shift. Although ours is the safest and most efficient system in the world, during the shutdown, many programs that reduce risk and increase safety stopped. When the shutdown finally ended, the system was on the verge of unravelling. Even though it is safer now than it was during the shutdown, it is less safe today than it was before the shutdown began.

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