NATCA Bookshelf

21 I s s u e s N A T I O N A L A I R T R A F F I C C O N T R O L L E R S A S S O C I A T I O N | W W W . N AT C A . O R G N i W To d a y F u l l B a c kg ro u n d Issue ISSUE Air traffic controller staffing and training have been problematic for many years. Despite some recent progress, they remain challenges that were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the ripple effects from the 35-day government shutdown that began in late 2018 and persisted into early 2019. The FAA continues to remain near a 30- year low in the number of CPCs. Controller staffing levels have fallen over 10% since 2011 and over 6% of the CPC workforce is eligible to retire. The lack of stable and sufficient funding for the FAA has made this problem worse. The 35-day government shutdown and sequestration-mandated funding cuts in 2013 forced the FAA to suspend hiring and shutter its training academy for significant periods of time. Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic, training was suspended at the academy, and when it restarted, enrollment was reduced by 50% to maintain health and safety protocols. If the FAA were to experience further decreases in CPC staffing levels, the agency would be hard-pressed to maintain pre-pandemic capacity, let alone modernize the system and expand it for new users. The Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report in June 2023 (AV2023035) that concluded: "FAA continues to face staffing challenges and lacks a plan to address them, which in turn poses a risk to the continuity of air traffic operations." DOT OIG Report at 6. Moreover, in November 2023, the FAA's NAS Safety Review Team (SRT) concluded that under the most recent CWP submitted to Congress: "when retirements and other attrition is accounted for, the hiring plan produces a negligible improvement over today's understaffed levels, resulting in a net increase of fewer than 200 air traffic controllers by 2032." MESSAGE Even before the pandemic, the FAA faced ma- jor staffing and training challenges due in-part to flawed budgetary and hiring practices, and COVID-19 made them worse. The 35-day govern- ment shutdown also was a disaster for the FAA workforce, including air traffic controllers, traffic management coordinators, and other aviation safety professionals who worked without pay, while more than 3,000 NATCA-represented FAA employees were furloughed without pay. The FAA suspended hiring and training for new hires during the shut- down. The academy also was closed, and it took the FAA several weeks to restart those classes after the shutdown ended. In addition, controller advanced skills classes were canceled. Prior to the shutdown, the FAA's hiring target for fiscal year (FY) 2019 was 1,431, but following the shutdown, the Agency reduced it by more than one-third. The first step to addressing this issue is revising FAA's CWP so that it is based on the CRWG's jointly- developed CPC staffing targets for each facility to ensure that Congress and aviation stakeholders have a complete understanding of each facility's operational staffing needs. For much of the previous decade, NATCA, the FAA, and Congress have taken steps in the right direction toward resolving these issues. For instance, in 2016, Congress passed a bill that improved the FAA's hiring process by streamlining the hiring of controllers who have prior experience, as well as veterans and Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) program students. In 2018, NATCA again worked with Congress to reinstate the FAA's Retired Military Controller (RMC) program, as well as provide the FAA authority to post local communiting area vacancy announcements for certain critically understaffed facilities in New York. Then, in 2019, Congress passed the ATC Hiring Reform Act of 2019, which made technical changes to the hiring process to make it less bureaucratic and more accountable. Most recently, the House passed its version of FAA Reauthorization that would require (1) FAA set its annual controller hiring target at "the maximum number of individuals able to be trained" at the Academy for FY 2024-2028; and (2) the interim adoption of the CRWG's "staffing models and methodologies" as the basis for the CWP until the Transportation Research Board (TRB) complete an assessment and the FAA adopts a new controller staffing model. The House bill also would require the FAA to identify in all future CWPs the limiting factors preventing FAA from hiring and training to the new staffing standard and all actions taken to resolve those impediments. Similarly, the Senate's version of FAA Reauthorization also requires the FAA to adopt

• Cover