“We don’t believe we have imposed ‘jailhouse’ work rules,” FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown told AVweb on Tuesday. She also disagreed with NATCA’s claims of “inadequate staffing” at facilities around the country. “The ‘authorized’ number they quote is from a 1998 contract,” Brown said. The FAA is working on a new set of numbers to determine appropriate ATC staffing levels based on statistical models, she said, and will release those numbers in March. She added that under the old NATCA contract, the FAA was not able to respond quickly enough to changes in traffic. Events such as the entry or exit of airlines at specific airports can drastically affect traffic very quickly. “Now we can be more flexible” to respond to such changes, she said. Brown said the FAA has plans in place to replace all the retiring controllers, train their replacements and increase the workforce by about 200 positions per year. She added that the FAA “always wants to reach a voluntary agreement” with workers, but in the case of the controllers’ union “we followed the process ordained by Congress.”
FAA Responds To NATCA
Key Takeaways:
- The FAA disputes NATCA's claims of "jailhouse" work rules and "inadequate staffing," stating the union's cited staffing numbers are based on an outdated 1998 contract.
- The agency is developing new, flexible statistical models for determining appropriate ATC staffing levels, which will be released in March, to better respond to rapid changes in air traffic.
- The FAA plans to replace retiring controllers, train new ones, and increase the workforce by approximately 200 positions annually, having followed a congressionally mandated process for agreements with the union.
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