National Air Traffic Controllers Association

The human being on the other end of your radio is not going anywhere.

Sources for today's program include AVWeb and reporting on FAA staffing from NATCA and industry publications.

More at RadioHanger.com. I'm Tower.

ATIS out.

They are the decisions that keep you talking about the flight afterward.

Information today comes from the FAA's Controller Workforce Report, NATCA staffing documentation, AOPA's G one hundred UL fuel tracking coverage, and Aviation Week for the MAX ten certification status.

More at radiohangar.com. That's ATIS for this midday.

Safe skies.

That shit used to be the executive branch's business.

It's also the executive, like it was under Reagan who got rid of the Air Traffic Controllers Union, which a lot of those guys, bingo, were veterans.

So I would, hot take here, right? Government regulation of a capitalist economy is not socialism.

It's not.

In this episode, I read the testimony from Greg Tichine, who was working at Boston Center on September eleventh, two thousand and one.

All of these statements can be found on the NATCA website under the community tab.

Sitting at the scope, my supervisor, John, came up behind us, and I asked, John, what happened? His reply said in a low and somber voice was bad news, then turned to walk away.

I had to know.

The FAA has been under pressure for years from Congress, from pilot organizations, from airlines, and from the general aviation community to accelerate hiring.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents the controller workforce, has been sounding the alarm for a long time.

The agency has been running well below its target staffing levels at facilities across the country, and that shortage has real operational consequences.

When a facility is short-staffed, controllers work more overtime.

In this episode, I read the testimony from Timothy Cantor, who was working at New York Center on 9/11, 2001.

Most of these statements were written for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and you can read them all on the NATCA website under the Community tab.

I recently retired July 2020 after thirty-three years at New York Center Area C. I was working the Elmira high radar position that morning when my supervisor, Charlie Alfaro, came up to me and my handoff assistant and said, "Boston Center is working a hijack." He gave us the call sign of American 11, and we were able to pull up the data tag.

A primary target with a reported altitude of flight level two niner zero was still in the data block, heading south approximately thirty-five miles north of the Kingston VORTAC.

Some 14,000 controllers lost their jobs, and PATCO was quickly decertified.

The current controllers union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, appeared in 1986, just five years after the PATCO strike, because the problems that created the 1981 strike still existed.

To learn more about air traffic control since the Patco strike, listen to episode 11 of Stories About Flying, 45 years after the Patco strike.

I eventually left the FAA to fly airplanes.