Bumpy Skies

Back in August when a mediation panel settled the final contract issues remaining between the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the mediators wrote: "No one to this process assumes the relationship will somehow be healed overnight...But the existence of this dispute resolution process signals recognition by the leadership of these parties that there is a relationship worth maintaining."

NATCA ratified the contract and elected a new president since that statement. But the argument that the relationship between the agency and the union would be difficult to mend is correct. The latest flare-up? Tests of the En Route Automation Modernization, the system that's supposed to upgrade air traffic control across the country. NATCA complains that the union isn't being looped in on the exercises, and that they're failing as a result. The implementation of new technology is always complicated, but it's too bad that, in addition to the actual problems with the technology itself, ERAM is sparking any sort of employee dissatisfaction.