NATCA Bookshelf

NIW Today | 42 STAFFING CRISIS CONTINUED • The FAA should discontinue its use of finance-driven staffing numbers and replace them with the operationally- derived CPC staffing targets, as reflected in its Priority Placement Tool, for the FAA's annual Air Traffic Controller Workforce Plan (CWP) and all future reports. In addition to these hiring improvements, in collaboration with NATCA, the FAA put in place a less-bureaucratic and more expeditious transfer policy for current FAA controllers that encourages experienced controllers at lower level facilities to voluntarily move up (at their own expense) to busier, more complex facilities. Although this alone will not fix the staffing crisis, it does allow experienced controllers to move to busier facilities where they are more likely to certify than Academy graduates. Subsequently, it allows the FAA to place Academy graduates in the less complex and less busy facilities where they are more likely to certify. Previously, Academy graduates were often placed in busy towers and radar facilities upon graduation, which resulted in dismal success rates. NATCA will continue to work closely with members of Congress and their staffs on additional legislative solutions that will further this goal. Most recently, U.S. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., introduced the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) Hiring Reform Act of 2019, which is bipartisan legislation that would help improve the FAA's controller hiring process. NATCA strongly supports this important piece of legislation, and we thank Sen. Shaheen and Sen. Hoeven for their leadership. BACKGROUND The air traffic controller workforce is in the midst of a staffing crisis. Sequestration forced the FAA to institute a hiring freeze and shutter the FAA Academy between March and December 2013. That compounded an already tenuous staffing situation in which the FAA had barely been able to replace retiring controllers. The FAA never made up for the sequester- related hiring freeze, and the recent 35-day government shutdown further exacerbated the problem. Even increased hiring between 2015 and 2018 did not make up for controller attrition from 2013 through 2018. Even though the FAA exceeded its hiring targets each of the past three fiscal years, CPC staffing levels continued to decrease by 3.2% over that period. As a result, the FAA remains unable to adequately staff many facilities. New hires, who are admitted into the FAA Academy in 2019, will require between two and four years of training before they become fully certified and capable of separating traffic on their own. Moreover, less than two-thirds (65%) of students in either the Tower/Terminal or En Route options, who were admitted to the Academy in FY 2018, successfully completed their training before moving on to train at a facility. There also is additional attrition once Academy graduates begin on-the-job training at their facilities. Fully certified air traffic controllers must train these new hires, often taking those controllers away from their primary job of separating traffic. Thus, facilities that already are at critical staffing levels and requiring mandatory overtime and a six- day work week to fully staff all positions are facing a dire situation, as retirement-eligible controllers continue to retire at a high rate, and those left on the job begin the time-intensive process of training Academy graduates. The FAA's annual Controller Workforce Plan (CWP) is problematic for a number of reasons and is negatively affecting operational staffing. In particular, the CWP ignores the staffing targets that NATCA jointly developed with the FAA's Air Traffic Organization to meet the Agency's operational needs. The CWP also relies on actual on-board "headcount" staffing numbers used by FAA Financial Services, which lump together CPCs with CPC-ITs (previously certified controllers who re-enter training due to a transfer to another facility) and developmental stage trainees. These issues, in addition to others, render the CWP inaccurate and misleading.

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