U.S. Airways/American suing FAA

Phase out FSS and continue to privatize ATC, that will save a bundle, the contract tower guys make something like 50% of their FAA counterparts...

Do you fly for a living?

If you said something like this in a crew room at a regional airline you might wake up in a hospital man.

Dollars and cents it works for the shareholders or in this case the taxpayers but it's really crappy for the people that have to go in to work each day and constantly be beaten down by outsourcing competition and sham bankruptcies.
 
It's a temporary solution to a long term problem that has resulted in a degradation of the mainline product. It's no different than any other outsourcing regime; the short term benefits are lucrative, but the long term impact is seldom worth the savings. Another great example of the long term affects of outsourcing is the trade deficit that has developed between the united states and her trading partners, where companies have made short term benefits in cost savings but the country as a while suffers and thus, those companies will suffer.

Outsourcing works great for investors and almost nobody else.
People don't want service. They want price and frequency 99% of the time. The trade deficit has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. Furthermore, if you think the companies whom outsourced (really, the term is offshoring to be technical) are suffering you are sorely mistaken.
 
Since no other controller has chimed in...



Controllers took a 33% cut in the pay bands from 2006 to 2010. For already certified controllers it was essentially a pay freeze, for trainees at the time it was a true 33% pay cut. Those trainees haven't seen a legitimate length of service raise since they've been hired to this day 7 years later. I get what you're saying, but we've already given more than anyone in the public sector.



Phase out FSS? Who will open and close VFR flight plans/distributes and disseminates NOTAMs/PIREPs/TFRs/weather briefs/enroute weather/enters IFR flight plans/relays clearances? There is a significant population out there that doesn't use tablets or smart phones as well as situations that those devises aren't a suitable replacement.

Also, your statement about contract controllers making 50% of what FAA controllers do is simply not true if you compare apples to apples. Most (certainly not all) contract towers are on par with an FAA level 4 or 5 VFR tower. I know what two contract companies pay in the CONUS and their pay is in line with the FAA level 4 and 5 pay scale.

The tower controllers making about twice what a contract controller makes are in places like DCA and LGA. I don't think you can, with a straight face, compare working the average contract tower with LGA or DCA and argue that they should earn the same.

Also, realize that a large portion of savings that a contract tower sees is due to single staffing most towers. The FAA doesn't allow their own facilities to staff with one controller at a time after COM5191. I personally believe that is wise policy.

A huge major cost of the FAA personal are the retirement benefits. This is not shown/accounted for when you look at simple payscales.

Again, look at major cities in Canada and how well the contracted out systems work. YYZ is a huge international airport that personally I have never had an issue with.

Really what I'm hearing is "better to close some towers than outsource additional". To me that makes no sense. If there is no money the FAA can raise taxes/user fees or save money, personally I vote contract out more towers vs. closing the 150 they are thinking about doing.

As far as FSS goes. Yes it will be an adjustment. Eventually though I believe it should be phased out. Smartphone access is at 50% or so right now and climbing steadily. As far as getting clearances I hope you are joking. FSS just calls the ATC facility. Maybe we should just cut out the middleman...
 
I love when non ATC types have all the answers for the problems with out spending one day in the career field! but FYI the Canadian ATC system runs about 6,000,000 operatiations a year with about 2400 controllers..... Chicago and Cleveland centers combined run almost 6,000,000 operations a year with 900 controllers. in 2005 Chicago tracon ran 1,500,000 operations with 99 controllers, so 99 controllers at C90 ran as many operations a 600 controllers from Canada in a 40 by 40 mile airspace. OH and Goverment workers retirements are payed by OPM not the agency thet they worked for so this dose not come out of FFA funds. God dont you hate when facts get in the way.

LOVE
OG

P.S this is not ment to be a slam on our Canadian controller buddys , just showing the diffrance in traffic counts.
 
(1) It's going to be more than $300 million at the FAA.
(2) I'm pretty sure that the controllers, airways systems technicians, aviation safety inspectors, and so on, are all worth the money that the taxpayer pays them and then some.
(3) Really? Advocating for a reduction in compensation for a group of people? I never, ever advocate for that. Bad karma.

Federal employees often share "furlough days" which actually results in somewhat shared pay cuts.
 
The federal budget is about 3729 billion dollars. The government is cutting 85 billion. That's about 2.2%. The FAA's budget is about 15 billion. The FAA needs to cut spending by about 0.3 billion The FAA has about 47000 employees. Reduce their compensation an average of $6400. Problem solved.
How about reducing Congressional pay by 33%, instead. I'm absolutely positive that will motivate them to work together and find better solutions than furloughing controllers and closing towers.
 
A huge major cost of the FAA personal are the retirement benefits. This is not shown/accounted for when you look at simple payscales.

If you look at most any federal job and compare it with its private sector counterpart in the same locale you'll find the federal worker is paid around 10-15% less than the comparable position in the private sector. The extra 10-15% is in part made up by retirement benefits. Its simply how the compensation pot has been split.

I don't think its fair to ask Federal employees to not only make less than their private sector counterparts, but to also have substandard benefits.

Really what I'm hearing is "better to close some towers than outsource additional". To me that makes no sense. If there is no money the FAA can raise taxes/user fees or save money, personally I vote contract out more towers vs. closing the 150 they are thinking about doing.

Where are you hearing that from?

As far as FSS goes. Yes it will be an adjustment. Eventually though I believe it should be phased out. Smartphone access is at 50% or so right now and climbing steadily. As far as getting clearances I hope you are joking. FSS just calls the ATC facility. Maybe we should just cut out the middleman...

You must have the best cell provider ever or don't fly anywhere rural.
 
Again, look at major cities in Canada and how well the contracted out systems work. YYZ is a huge international airport that personally I have never had an issue with..

Again apples to apples please. YYZ would be the 13th busiest tower in the US and Vancouver the 28th or 29th after Centential if they were they American. The US ATC system is more comparable to the continent of Europe. You can skip to about 2:50 for the salient points.


 
Might be a dumb question but if airlines are penalized for delays will they be fined for the delays caused by furloughed ATC?
 
look at the pile of pure horse crap FSS has become after is was contracted to Lockheed Martin.

Ya I hate dealing with them from the ATC side. A Lakes Air pilot discovered the phone number to the supervisors desk at my center and starting calling it to cancel IFR and get a clearance from bumble fudge ND. I found it creative but the supervisors didn't like it.
 
Ya I hate dealing with them from the ATC side. A Lakes Air pilot discovered the phone number to the supervisors desk at my center and starting calling it to cancel IFR and get a clearance from bumble fudge ND. I found it creative but the supervisors didn't like it.

I do that with Washington Center some times. It's a joke trying to get a hold of Lockheed in some places, and all they are doing is calling the center anyway. One cool thing I did discover though is that if you get disconnected from Lockheed (which happens sometimes with the often poor phone coverage in some "rural" areas) they computer knows who the last inbound caller was they talked to and they will actually call you back instead of you having to sit on hold again.
 
Ozelot said:
A Lakes Air pilot discovered the phone number to the supervisors desk at my center and starting calling it to cancel IFR and get a clearance from bumble fudge ND. I found it creative but the supervisors didn't like it.

That's nothing.

NO ONE in the world can write incident reports like the Great Lakes Pilots can.
 
Ya I hate dealing with them from the ATC side. A Lakes Air pilot discovered the phone number to the supervisors desk at my center and starting calling it to cancel IFR and get a clearance from bumble fudge ND. I found it creative but the supervisors didn't like it.
I was given the number and then the following numbers to punch to get straight to the desk of a center controller one night. I think we were both sick of dealing with FSS, and he was like here just call me directly. When I used it a few days later that controller was quite surprised to get me instead of lockheed.
 
A few questions...

A) Is the pilot who wrote the report Tyler Wojo?

B) If so where is he now? If NOT Tyler, where is the pilot who wrote that report?

C) If that wasn't Tyler Wojo, where is he now? Also, what is the 'Wojo' incident then?
 
Again apples to apples please. YYZ would be the 13th busiest tower in the US and Vancouver the 28th or 29th after Centential if they were they American. The US ATC system is more comparable to the continent of Europe. You can skip to about 2:50 for the salient points.




Great so we can safely outsource from 13 on down then, right?

I don't really know how much FAA ATC's make but from what I read online contract guys make around $60k with a few bucks an hour extra for benefits (retirement and medical). Seems to me a significant savings over the FAA guys in comparable facilities.

If you guys are on par on a cost level basis than forget everything I wrote, but personally if we can get more bang for the same buck let's do it.
 
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