Fly Us Safe Campaign
The FAA: Building a Bloated Bureaucracy, While Fewer Eyes Watch the Skies
The FAA is exacerbating the staffing crisis by hiring more supervisors while the number of controllers watching the skies is dwindling. As the FAA builds this bloated bureaucracy, they create a situation where more supervisors watch fewer controllers who are forced to guide more airplanes through our skies.
Bureaucracy by the numbers: In 2004, the FAA increased the number of supervisors by 189. At the same time the number of air traffic controllers actually separating airplanes, decreased by 404. In the first quarter of 2005 alone, the FAA added another 119 supervisors. But at the same time they lost 211 controllers – more than half of the controllers lost in all of 2004.1
The FAA is actually contributing to the staffing shortage: Retirements, along with unnecessary promotions to supervising positions, help deplete the staff necessary to control skies. Many large en route centers lost more than a half dozen veteran controllers to fill unnecessary supervisors' positions in 2004 alone. At Washington Center for example, 19 air traffic controllers were moved to the supervisory ranks. Nationwide, the FAA averages fewer than eight controllers for every first line supervisor – and that doesn't even consider the high numbers of second level and third level managers.
FAA scaling back efficient and effective program to increase supervision: For 30 years, the FAA has used a Controller in Charge (CIC) program to assist absent supervisors. The program is intended to reduce costs to the FAA by allowing a certain percentage of air traffic controllers to take on more responsibilities so that the FAA would not have to staff as many supervisors. This program provided flexibility to the smaller facilities, allowing them to operate beyond eight hours a day, five days a week, without the significant cost of excessive supervisors, and it focused the staffing of operating supervisors to the larger facilities. The 1998 collective bargaining agreement between NATCA and the FAA allowed for expansion of this program. Under this agreement, the FAA was supposed to decrease the number of supervisors (through attrition) and give more responsibilities to the air traffic controllers certified to be CICs. The FAA lived up to this agreement from 1999 – 2004 by reducing the total number of supervisors by 434 (from 1967 to 1533). But, despite a November 2001 GAO investigation that found that the CIC measure would save the agency $141.5 million, in 2004, the FAA abandoned that agreement, increasing the number of supervisors, and decreasing efficiency.