Jonathan Stewart

It’s not as simple as “we hired gamers.” A Government Accountability Office study released in January found just 2% of applicants will become certified air traffic controllers. So for every 1,000 applicants, 20 will become controllers. In the next few years, staffing is set to go off the cliff by half of all 11,000 employees departing or not making it through the years-long certification process. The union and the FAA agreed several years ago to address staffing by hiring enough trainees that in several years’ time, the FAA would have 14,500 certified controllers, but Duffy and Bedford adjusted those levels down by 2,000 controllers. Duffy and Bedford then declared there was no staffing shortage after reducing the number of controllers needed. Meanwhile, controllers are buckling under the scheduling requirements. Every controller who spoke with the Washington Examiner, alongside more than 100 who sent private messages, reported a long-term trend of getting just four days off per month. Shifts regularly span 10 hours. Instead of working a standard four-day, 40-hour week, controllers are assigned two mandatory overtime shifts per week, forcing them into six-day workweeks that often devastate family and personal life, as well as complicate mental health. The back-to-back shifts can also hurt sleep cycles. Rather than working stable hours, controllers cycle through chaotic shifts, often working an overnight block and returning to the facility just 10 hours later, only for the following day’s shift to start at a different time of day or night. On top of that, a small 2.8% annual raise Congress funded in April is being by the FAA on the basis that the agency needs to “unlock” more productivity from controllers. washingtonexaminer.com/news/…

And finally, @RepMikeQuigley finished by saying that refusing to pay out a raise that air traffic controllers were due would only turn away potential applicants and sour employees. Bedford maintained that he had “the utmost respect” for controllers. “If they heard what you just said, they wouldn’t think that you’re showing them the full respect,” Quigley said. “Show them the full 3.8% to show the respect of what we need them for.” washingtonexaminer.com/trave… 7/7

The Republican chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee, Steve Womack, told Bedford his explanation for air traffic controllers underperforming yet needing to work more overtime did not make sense. “I can’t wrap my head around time on station or whatever you call it, going down and overtime going higher,” Womack said. ⬇️ 6/7

Bedford suggested to @RepBonnie that her anecdotal intel about air traffic controllers being overworked and exhausted was not factual. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) told Bedford his approach to low morale and understaffing was akin to a “Catch-22.” “You don’t think they’ve met that efficiency,” Watson Coleman said. “And you don’t think that they’re working as effectively. But then you say you’re understaffed. They say that they’re working six days a week, sometimes 10 hours a day, sometimes even more, and then have a responsibility to do the training. They’re contending that the morale in the agency is very bad, and that you seem to be operating it as if you’re a corporate bottom-line person who is concerned about money, and that’s what I’m concerned about.” Bedford pushed back and claimed Watson Coleman was “listening to a lot of anecdotal information” about the state of the air traffic control workforce and insisted the “data will tell us something entirely different.” “The complaints that I’m hearing from various venues are legitimate. … People are walking away before even spending all the time that they could to accumulate full pension,” said Watson Coleman, who asked Bedford for a specific date when the 2.8% raise would be paid out and what it would take for that to happen. ⬇️ 5/7

Bedford's responses were that low morale and short staffing would be fixed by mass hiring. However, those new hires do not automatically become certified controllers. New hires must pass training in Oklahoma, then undergo a one- to five-year process getting certified at whichever facility they are assigned to nationwide. Just 30% of trainees will make it through in a year, Bedford told the Washington Examiner in an interview in August. In addition to the existing shortage of controllers, the FAA has projected it will lose up to 6,900 controllers through 2028 due to retirements, resignations, transfers, and those who do not complete training. He also said controllers need to work more during their shifts, which did not sit well with some lawmakers. Air traffic controllers have a variety of responsibilities throughout the day in addition to being at the controls, known as time on position. Bedford said 15 years ago, controllers worked 5 hours per shift on position and were at 4 hours now, so once he unlocked more productivity, they would get their promised raise. When I looked at the FAA's own data, it revealed that 15 years ago, controllers were working 4 hrs and 14 minutes, not 5. ⬇️ 4/7

O'Hare Intl Airport is 35% short of air traffic controllers, leading to flight delays because controllers can only manage so many flights at once. Illinois congressman @RepMikeQuigley told Bedford that controllers at @fly2ohare are “burned out” from “working overtime for years.” Quigley said Bedford was putting a condition on their pay raise that doesn't exist. ⬇️ 3/7

House appropriators responsible for funding the FAA rebuked Administrator Bedford during an oversight hearing Tuesday for holding a 2.8% pay increase over the heads of the nation’s air traffic controllers. “I don’t think the law gave you the authority to squeeze more work out of [an] overworked, overstressed workforce,” @RepJamesClyburn said. “So it would seem to me that this pay raise question, you’d taken some discretions not intended in the law, certainly not intended when Congress approved.” ⬇️ 2/7

🧵THREAD: Democratic and Republican lawmakers have begun to question FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford’s decision not to pay out an annual raise to the nation’s 11,000 air traffic controllers since Congress funded it nearly five months. ⬇️ 1/7