DOT OIG: ATC Hiring Makes Progress, Needs Work

Editorial Staff

Friday, February 16, 2007 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

The Department of Transportation Inspector General's report found that the FAA made significant improvements by centralizing its controller hiring process and reducing training time and costs, largely through increased use of simulators.
However, the report also identified five key shortcomings: undefined facility staffing standards, inaccurate controller retirement projections, excessive on-the-job training times, inability to measure productivity improvements due to a lack of baseline metrics, and failure to identify the total cost of hiring and training new controllers.

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The Department of Transportation Inspector General last week releasedhttps://www.oig.dot.gov/StreamFile?file=/data/pdfdocs/av2007032.pdf”target=”_blank”>a report covering FAA progress and key elementsof the FAA’s congressionally mandated controller workforce plancreated to counter an anticipated surge in controller attrition. Thereport concludes that the “FAA has made significant improvements bycentralizing its hiring process” and has reduced “the time and costs”to train controllers (largely through increased use of simulatortraining), but the report also identifies and expands on fiveshortcomings: staffing standards, projected retirements, controllertraining, productivity initiatives and costs associated with trainingas it relates to on-the-job training times.

To expand, theOffice of the Inspector General (OIG) reports that facility staffingstandards remain undefined — this precludes effective placement ofnew hires and so staffing ranges for each location are recommendedfor the FAA’s next update of the workforce plan. Controllerretirements in 2005 exceeded FAA projections by 36 percent — theFAA’s forecast method needs to be refined. Overall trainingimprovements are evident, according to the OIG, but on-the-jobtraining time is still too high — OIG recommends that clearinstructions should be issued to all facilities. The FAA’s goal ofreducing controller staffing were met in 2005, but increases inproductivity can not be measured, because the FAA failed to definebaseline metrics for measuring improvement. Finally, the FAA has notyet identified the cost of hiring and training more than 11,800 newcontrollers, according to the report. The bright spot, according tothe report, is the FAA’s controller hiring process, which has beencentralized, allowing earlier management of process, earlier noticeof new hires to facilities and reduced clearance time.