Rebusting The Air Traffic Controllers (TomPaine.com)

Rebusting The Air Traffic Controllers
Dick Meister
May 29, 2007



Dick Meister is a San Francisco-based journalist who has covered labor and political issues for more than four decades. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.


It’s not easy for air traffic controllers with a Republican in the White House. First, it was Ronald W. Reagan firing 11,000 of them in 1981 for striking to try to better their onerous working conditions. Now, it’s George W. Bush making the conditions even worse.

The controllers aren’t the only ones involved. Millions of airline passengers and employees and many fliers who pilot their own aircraft face serious threats to their safety because of what’s being done by the controllers’ bosses—Bush appointees who run the Federal Aviation Administration.

FAA policies have kept many air traffic control towers badly understaffed, subjecting the clearly demoralized men and women who operate them to long, fatiguing work shifts with little time to rest. Listen, for instance, to what one veteran controller says of the work schedules (anonymously, for fear of employer retaliation):

“Hundreds, if not thousands of air traffic controllers work a day shift—typically from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m.—then report back to work that night, eight or nine hours later. On a good evening, I get four hours sleep. A typical evening I get 2 1/2. That’s right, 2 1/2 hours of sleep for an already sleep-deprived mind and body that has been going all week. Then it’s in the shower, a snack, pack up and drive back to work to separate airplanes from the ground and from each other.”

Under such circumstances, the potential for serious accidents is obvious. Consider the crash of a Conair jet on takeoff from the Lexington, Ky., airport last August that killed all 49 passengers and crew members. Only one controller was on duty, although staffing requirements called for two, and the lone controller had had only nine hours between shifts—and only two hours sleep. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/05/29/rebusting_the_air_traffic_controllers.php