Bill would halt supervisor cuts at FAA

A two-year old Federal Aviation Administration plan to reduce the number of air traffic control supervisors is close to being halted following the Senate's passage of the fiscal 2002 Transportation appropriations bill Tuesday afternoon. Now on the President's desk, the bill, H.R. 2299 requires the FAA to stop reducing the number of air traffic control supervisors and stop expanding the 40-year-old controller-in-charge program (CIC). CICs have temporary authority to run air traffic control operations when supervisors are absent. A 1998 bargaining agreement with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) required the agency to cut the number of air traffic control supervisors, both through attrition and by certifying more employees to be CICs. The bill also allocates $5 million to the agency to ensure that supervisors are retained. Members of Congress and the Federal Managers Association criticized the expanded CIC program when it was announced in 1998, saying it would reduce air traffic safety. Today the program includes more than 55 percent of the FAA workforce, according to the General Accounting Office's recent report "Air Traffic Control: FAA Enhanced the Controller-in-Charge Program, But More Comprehensive Evaluation Is Needed" (GAO-02-55). "We have been voicing our concerns about the dangers of reducing supervisory oversight for the last two years," said FMA President Michael B. Styles. In its report, GAO questioned the overall effectiveness of CIC training. The report said that FAA can't assure that CIC training materials are presented effectively. Also, FAA has no plan in place for remedial or refresher training for employees who are CIC-certified, but who rarely spend time as CICs, GAO said. At a hearing in March, FMA representatives testified that poorly trained CICs led to increased operational errors in the past five years. Operational errors occur when two airplanes fly too close to each other in the air. Such errors increased by 51 percent from fiscal 1996 to fiscal 2000. NATCA, which opposes the language in the bill, said attributing increases in operational errors to CIC expansion is "irrational and groundless." Operational errors while a CIC was on duty dropped from 10 percent in fiscal 2000 to 8 percent in fiscal 2001, according to NATCA. "The CIC program is an important component in a collective strategy to improve productivity and efficiency while providing cost savings to the agency," NATCA said in an issue paper on the CIC program.