FAA drops travel perk from training program

The Federal Aviation Administration is trying to prevent employees from using a training program as a way to get free flights to vacation destinations.

Under the Liaison and Familiarization Training program, air traffic controllers and other FAA employees sit in cockpits with pilots on commercial flights. Doing so gives the FAA employees a first-hand look at aircraft performance and shows them how pilots interact with air control towers and deal with in-flight problems, the FAA says.

But Treasury Department Inspector General Kenneth M. Mead has criticized the program for several years, saying the training has often become "a pretense for controllers and other FAA personnel, including managers, to get free travel to resort, vacation and personal leave destinations of their choice."

For example, Mead found that one FAA employee used the training to take 12 weekend trips in a 15-month period to visit his family in Tampa, Fla. Another scheduled the training on annual leave or regular days off to take seven trips to Los Angeles and one trip to Munich, Germany.

Acknowledging the program's flaws, the FAA on Apr. 29 signed an agreement with the controllers' union-the National Air Traffic Controllers Association-putting some limits on the program to prevent employees from using the training as a travel perk.

The limits include:

• No more than six trips per calendar year (compared to nine previously).
• A maximum of one international trip, available only to controllers who deal with international flights.
• All familiarization program training must be completed on official time.
• Employees can take no more than two trips to the same airport in a year (compared to eight trips previously).
• Training objectives must be clearly documented before any trips. Supervisors must approve training objectives.

FAA spokesman Fraser Jones said the more tightly controlled program will meet the training needs of employees while also complying with government ethics rules. The Federal Labor Relations Authority helped FAA and the union broker the deal, which applies only to controllers. The FAA is in the process of creating similar guidelines for non-bargaining unit employees and managers, Jones said.

In an Aug. 3, 1998 memorandum to FAA Administrator Jane Garvey, Mead noted that not all employees use the program for personal travel needs. But he said a "widespread lapse of ethics" in the training program was "condoned for an extended period of time, if not tacitly endorsed, by senior management of the FAA."