subcommittee will come darter and obviously everyone knows now that we have been on the floor voting since about one thirty and hopefully we will not be interrupted but there are no guarantees on this and you never know it will get a vote but we appreciate your patience the chair will ask all members and staff at this time to turn out like trying to devise his offer on vibrate on the subcommittees meeting today to hear testimony air traffic control facility staff i will give a i will summarize my opening statement calling mr p try to give an opening statement or his remarks and then we will  introduce our first panel of witnesses and under the five minute rule ask them to offer their testimony and i'm sure we'll have questions as well i welcome everyone to the our subcommittee hearing today on air traffic control facilities staffing the flying public relies on our air traffic controllers every day to make sure runways operate safely flight patterns are checked systematic takeoffs and arrivals occur and most importantly that airplanes maintain separation they do these activities one hundred thirty thousand times every day making air traffic the safest form of transportation in the united states however we are facing a serious problem some believe crisis in the controller workforce because of the pascoe strike and subsequent firing of air traffic control controllers in one thousand nine hundred one most of the air traffic controllers that we have today in the workforce were hired in s as a result most are eligible to retire and it's very clear at least to me that the f a a was not and is not ready to deal with the situation as early as two thousand and two the government accountability office warned of a controller retirement crisis further exasperating the problem has been the imposition of a contract on the air traffic controllers according to nasa the national air traffic controllers u nion since the work force rules were imposed on the controllers retirement and other attrition numbers have increased substantially fatigue and operational errors are at an all time high and morale is very low already fiscal year two thousand and eight the f a a has lost nine hundred fifty four experienced controllers almost five controllers per day according to nasa since the beginning of the school year two thousand and seven forty thousand years of his experience has been lost in this situation has some serious efficiency and safety consequences around the country because of staffing shortages and misalignment between experienced personnel and new hires more experience controllers are being asked to work longer hours to handle increasingly congested runways and airspace fatigue is becoming an issue that must be addressed and is creating a risk to the operational efficiency and safety of the air traffic control system good example is the rate of runway incursions so far this year we have had sixteen type a and b incursions i believe both controller fatigue and scheduling are factors in these incursions and they must be addressed though the f a a prides itself on reducing the time it takes to train a controller there are many facilities where controllers are not receiving their training in a timely manner i am concerned that unless this problem is dealt with there will be in increase in the attrition rate of new hires making a bad situation even worse the numbers the f a a uses in the controller workforce plans the c w p can be deceiving while the c w p is accurate that the number of controllers has increased since two thousand and four the f a a does not differentiate between a certified controller and one still in training this is a critical piece of information that must be reported to all stakeholders according to the department of transportation inspector general the number of controllers in training has increased by sixty two percent while the number of certified controllers has decreased by eleven percent the f a s controller workforce is dream changing and it needs to be acknowledged that and work with stakeholders and congress to keep up with our air transportation system and make sure that it's running safely and efficiently with that welcome our witnesses here today and before i recognize mr p try for his opening statement or comments i would ask unanimous consent to allow two weeks for all members to revise and extend their remarks and to permit the submission of additional statements  by members and witnesses without objection so larger than at this time the chair recognizes mr right i thank you very much chairman is this is an important and timely hearing to discuss the air traffic control  facilities staffing the controller retirement bubble we have been discussing for years is beginning to burst we are all aware following the path strike in eighty one a large number of controllers were fired and an equally large number were hired in the early eighty's the f a a hired over twelve thousand controllers during that time in eighty percent of the nation's air traffic controllers were developmental controllers in training today twenty five percent of the nation's controllers are developmental controllers know not surprisingly over twenty five years later the controllers hired in the eighty's are approaching or reaching retirement age as they retire others begin their careers for the last several years has pursued a plans to have sixteen thousand three hundred seventy one controllers on board by two thousand and seventeen as this wave of retirements was anticipated we would have been better off if this hiring had begun sooner  controllers receive all required training particular concern to me is how the f a a will ensure the appropriate ratio of certified controllers to developmental controllers at each air traffic control facility and i realize that this involves of a balancing act however the f a a needs to remain vigilant and keep it a priority we also must be mindful that the needs of the air traffic control system are changing with the transition to next gen the role of controllers is going to change during the transition to next gen the f a a must work closely with controllers to develop the best training and operational processes for the new air traffic management system likewise it be vital that we update our facilities and ensure that they are staffed appropriately finally i'd like to reiterate that everyone would be well served if the controllers union and f a a management could settle their outstanding labor issues i understand a sudden after new settlement offer in the last day or so and as i have done many times before i would like to again encourage the parties to seriously pursue if not then the chair appreciate your consideration and will now recognizes the first panel of up to today that will be hearing from our first panel i will enter deuce all of our witnesses mr hank infrastructure issues with the u s government accountability office mr patrick for who is the president of the national air traffic control controllers association and mr david connelly who's the vice president f a a managers association  gentlemen we welcome you here before the subcommittee again we apologize for the late start of the subcommittee hearing but we are anxious to hear your testimony and we would ask you to summarize your testimony in five minutes which will allow members of the opportunity to ask questions we of course will receive your testimony and ask questions of the first panel before we move on to the second panel with that mr kosky you're recognized under the five minute ok and i intend to be brief chairman costello congressman pete try and members of the subcommittee it's not hard to be here before you today to talk about air traffic controller staffing i joined the f a a after a long career in safety and operations and i came a to focus on safety efficiency and work to improve the labor relations atmosphere the american people deserve nothing less aviation has experienced a decade of turbulence the events of nine eleven airline failures and bankruptcies with unspeakable trauma the private sector employees that work for those companies delays and soaring fuel prices are before us now yet over the last decade the safety of aviation in the united states continues to improve we are now the best in the world the employees of the f a a produced this record the controllers technicians managers scientists inspectors and staff all working together as a team serious runway incursions have been brought down by focused efforts in the past year significant operational errors are level but still above our targets by about one per day and we do need to work harder on that yet the flying public does remain safe because combination of training teamwork and technology continues to provide the safety net when human error does occur we will shortly be rolling out our first efforts to improve safe the safety culture within the a t o with nafta  in the midwest with our air traffic safety action program both nafta president pap for and i are committed to make this work and i thank him for his unwavering leadership in this critical safety initiative next week f a a will be convening its first ever fatigue safety summit bringing together worldwide leaders and science understanding of fatigue and human factors airlines manufacturers f a a will be represented as well as strong support from the national transportation safety board new techniques of science and scheduling technology will be presented and evaluated and our hope is that there will be actionable strategies which can be understood and implemented for the twenty four by seven nature of o workforce it has taken a few years to smooth out our hiring and training efforts but today we are solidly on target with our hiring plan better hiring processes and training are you holding greater stability to the plan in the efforts we have underway this year we plan to hire two thousand controllers here in two thousand and eight and right now we have seventy five hundred candidates for those opportunities we will carefully watch the miss mix of new controllers with the establish controllers as they enter the workforce we're deploying twenty four high fidelity tower simulators which have already demonstrated a twenty five to fifty percent reduction in training time in response to the inspector general we are also establishing a new vice president of technical training to ensure that national focus of our training efforts is understood and well managed we have used retention in sign ups to retain retirement eligible controllers and we have rehired seasoned controllers to work as instructors through our contract training program finally the f a a is working diligently to craft solutions to our ongoing labor dispute i will hold my management team accountable for being part of that solution as we operate the system with fiscal responsibility while setting our employees up for success leadership from labor will also be required to achieve that aspiration we have an opportunity to do this but what will demand focus and leadership from both sides there is something unique about aviation professionals well labor and management have inherent conflicts professionalism always prevails when people are working traffic flying airplanes or doing their jobs their work continues to be stellar as they continue to serve the traveling public with distinction this translates into a reliable and a safe system we have many issues to address from refreshing the work force to the transition to next gen modernization these efforts are too important to be attenuated by a continuing atmosphere of contentious labor relations mr chairman mr tryon members of the committee the dedicated employees of the air traffic organization are proud to be providing a critical service to the american people to enhance its mission we need to continue to find ways to work better together to keep our skies as safe as possible members of the subcommittee we preach hate the opportunity to testify today regarding key issues facing f a s controller workforce f a a plans to hire and train nearly seventeen thousand new controllers to offset retirements over the next decade ensuring enough certified controllers at f a s more than three hundred air traffic control facilities will remain a significant watch item for the subcommittee since two thousand and five thirty three hundred controllers have left the workforce twenty three percent higher than f a a had projected however since two thousand and five f a a has hired three thousand four hundred fifty new controllers twenty five percent more than projected f a a now faces a fundamental transformation in the composition of its controller workforce new controllers represent twenty five percent of the workforce up from fifteen percent in two thousand and four addressing controller attrition will be f a s major challenge for at least the next ten years and the agency must focus its efforts on three key areas first f a a must improve controller facility training last week we issued our report on f a s controller facility training program our second review of this program since two thousand and four f a a is taking actions at the national level to get this important program on track for example f a a is increasing the use of simulators and contractor training support however the program continues to be extremely decentralized and the efficiency and quality of the training varies from location to location we have identified several actions to improve this important program first f a a must establish realistic standards for the number of developmental controllers that facilities can accommodate f a a plans to increase the number of developmental controllers to over thirty percent of the total workforce which would be the high percentage of developmental in fifteen years f a a estimates that the total controller workforce at each facility can include up to thirty five percent developmental as of april two thousand and eight sixty seven facilities nationwide twenty one percent of all f a a air traffic control facilities already exceeded that level which could significantly increase training times because the number of developmental controllers would surpass training at capacity given the various sizes and complexities of f a s three hundred facilities f a a needs to identify by facility how many developmental to each facility can realistically accommodate next f a a must clarify responsibility for oversight and direction of the facility training program at the national level facility training is shared between four different a t o vice president as a result of these overlapping responsibilities we found significant confusion at the facility level over exactly who's in charge in its statement today f a a announced that it has created a new senior position responsible for training a much needed st second f a a must address controllers human factors addressing controller human factors such as fatigue and situational awareness is important for maintaining safe operations of the nass in its investigation of comair flight five one nine b expressed concern that the lone controller on duty at the time of the accident had only slept about two hours before his shift training new controllers on human factor issues as well as technical aspects of air traffic control such as airspace phraseology and procedures will become increasingly important as f a a begins to address the larger influx of new controllers in april two thousand and three we reported that almost ninety percent of controller operational errors were due to human factor issues rather than procedural or equipment deficiencies in may two thousand and seven we again reported that f a a needed to focus on controller human factors and training in order to reduce the risk of runway incursions caused by controllers at the time f a a has done little in this area since last year however f a a has made progress in addressing human factor training initiatives third f a a must ensure consistency and accuracy in reporting and addressing controller operational errors as f a a transitions to a new and relatively inexperienced controller workforce it must investigate mitigate and accurately report operational errors in two thousand and four reported that a relied on an inaccurate self reporting system to track operational errors only twenty percent of f a s more than three hundred air traffic control facilities had an automated system to identify operational errors in response f a a is developing an automated system traffic analysis and review program to identify when operational errors occur at trade qantas elegies f a a started deploying the system in f y two thousand and eight with an estimated completion date at all locations by the end of calendar year two thousand and nine f a a must ensure that these programs are used to enhance safety and must protect new voluntary disclosure program the air air traffic safety action program from potential misuse or work on a similar program which grants immunity to airline employees who report safety problems found that safety information was either inaccessible or not used to resolve the cause of the reported safety issue f a a must ensure that similar issues do not occur  afternoon focuses on three and traffic controller workforce issues first the status of workforce attrition and hiring facility staffing and its implications for the operation and safety of the nation's air traffic control system and third controller training for current a t c operations and next general with regard to attrition and hiring our analysis shows that experience controllers are retiring faster than expected for example the proportion of controllers that are retiring within two years of becoming eligible has increased about from thirty three percent in two thousand and five to forty two percent in two thousand and seven although we have not seen a comprehensive analysis of the reasons why the increased attrition we do know that only a very small minority of it is because of my mandatory retirement age for example in two thousand and seven of the more than sixteen hundred attrition only seventeen were mandatory retirements this pattern continues into early two thousand and eight to address this attrition and increase its pool of candidates f a a has undertaken several initiatives as a result f a a made its hiring goes in two thousand and six two thousand seven and is on target for meeting its two thousand and eight goals with regard to my second issue facility staffing there are two key parts the number of staff at a facility and the ratio of developmental controllers to fully certified controllers in terms of staff numbers we found that in may of two thousand eight hundred forty five three hundred fourteen facilities were overstaffed and twelve were understaffed when compared with f a a staffing standards according to f it is deliberately overstepping facilities with new hires so they will be trained and ready to replace retiring controllers over the next few years although we have some concerns about over staffing as a concept we think it makes sense but we are more concerned about the potential implications of understaffing for the safety and efficiency of the a t c system the major application of staffing is a greater use of overtime which can lead to fatigue we have previously reported that controllers at some of the nation busiest airports are working six days a week because of staffing shortages to its credit f a a is addressing this issue stablish ing a group of stay close to work on solutions for this problem and offering incentive of up to twenty five thousand dollars for controllers to relocate to understaffed facilities n t s b is also recommend that f a a take states take steps to mitigate air traffic controller parties including working with nat to revise control of work scheduling policies however we are concerned because matt and f a a disagree on the level of cooperation that's taking place between them on these issues regarding the ratio of developmental controllers to see p historically trainees have accounted for less than thirty five percent of the controller workforce but because of the increase in retirements and hiring these proportions are in flux and the imbalance between developmental and c p c's within facilities could have some potentially serious implications including increased over time reduce system efficiency and extended training time for developmental controllers f a a is working to develop target ranges for facilities in light of these current circumstances we think this is a positive development training my last issue according to f a a it has reduced the time it takes to train controllers by about a year controller training took from three to four years in two thousand  it took two to three years in two thousand and seven we cautioned that it may not be prudent to base estimates of its future capacity for developing c p c's on these early results which may not be sustainable over time  and members of the subcommittee we were down to five two additional training concerns that call for f a s immediate attention first the attrition rate development control is has increased from six percent in two thousand and six to nine percent in two thousand and seven and is expected to rise to fourteen percent in two thousand and eight the ideas work suggest that even these figures may be low this increases serious budgetary implications since each time a trainee is lost the government's investment to date is also lost a second training concern is related to next year and next band is a new paradigm that requires a new approach to training including a focus on human factors and automation our work is shown that if human factors are not considered early in the development of systems there will be delays in implementation and substantial cost increases we are concerned it has not obtained the expertise needed to conduct human factors research necessary for next gen training has not prioritized the needed research and is not identified a funding source for it we also emphasize the importance of including controllers and other key stakeholders in developmental activities associated with next year in training so they will be participants in next year try to summarize and keep my remarks short answer any questions you may have let me begin by thanking you mr chairman for your understanding and attention and commitment to the air traffic controller staffing levels and for all in this important hearing under your leadership the house passed a conference a bill to address the many issues facing the national airspace system including control retention staffing levels which is the subject of today's hearing the men and women of the national traffic controllers association hope that the senate will follow suit and reconsider the f a a reauthorization modernization act that unfortunately fell victim to procedural bickering last month with the current authorization set to expire june thirtieth and with unmatched controller to approaching five per day it has never been more imperative that address this issue than it is today the national airspace system is currently experiencing unprecedented and i'm sustainable loss of air traffic controllers and those that have followed this issue know that what negative is the current retirement wave two but before i get into the portion of my testimony i want to tell the subcommittee that the men and women i represent are among the most dedicated and professional employees phonic government every day i am reminded that their first amendment has always been and continues to be the safe operation arashi our space system the safety of the flying public will always be the priority of the union and of all the related safety related oppression was at work for the a i worry that sometimes this fact may get lost on the members of the subcommittee because of the focus on our labor dispute with the agency let me be clear this country is facing an air traffic control staffing crisis the crisis is the crisis is serious and the crisis is now those losses are leading to insufficient staffing levels across the country requiring more use of overtime and leading to increased fatigue all of this adds up to burned out workforce in an unacceptable compromise to left only five hundred thirty eight have achieved full certification as fewer than sixteen percent of the five hundred twenty five and still employed hired this year and still employed in the first six months of fiscal two thousand and eight only four have fully certified before the imposition of the work rules which the f a a continues to mislabel as a contract the agency told congress at the end this subcommittee that there would not be a mass exodus of air traffic controllers unfortunately the f a a was wrong in june of two thousand and six the f a a predicted that nine hundred  fifty controllers will leave the workforce in fiscal two thousand and seven the actual term attrition numbers of controllers leaving in two thousand and seven was six hundred twenty two seventy percent higher than the agency's prediction and halfway through fiscal two thousand and eight we're down another nine hundred sixty controllers and and the pace to break last year staggering losses the f a a failed to plan for retirement by hiring thirteen controllers in two thousand and four they exacerbated that way by prematurely cutting off contract negotiations in two thousand and six and cause an attrition tsunami that has seen nearly twenty seven other controllers leave since they implemented that system does not by coincidence that the lays near misses and runway incursions of all increases the number of controllers is diminished in facilities across the country most notably in our busiest tower c dement this is no coincidence fiscal year two thousand and seven saw the number of later craft increased by more than twenty thousand over the previous year far outpacing the point two percent increase in operations last month the joint economic committee released a report that found the flight delays cost u s economy an astounding forty one billion dollars last year while travelers lost a jaw dropping three hundred twenty million hours in wasted time similarly a recent study by the travel industry association determine that passengers concerned with the ladies have led them to bypass air travel altogether costing the economy an additional twenty six billion dollars the f a a has responses been to unilaterally implement other misguided policies that work only to ensure that adequate staffing level targets continue to be missed the f a s insistence on moving  controversial consolidations the combinations and other realignment of facilities and service requires more not less controllers cost more per operation and results in more operational errors when compared to other split facilities the agency also has in use of cell next gen as a cure all for all  aviation woes from congestion to safety to efficient fuel use and even control or staffing but i remind the members of the subcommittee that next gen is at least two decades away before we hang our hat on the still conceptual program to take aviation to the next generation contract negotiations doing so will help to retain the veteran controllers that are leaving the system at unsustainable record levels these veteran controllers are responsible for on the job training that turns a trainee into a certified controller and the retention is essential to maintaining safe operations the system second the f a a must work with mac and the national academy of sciences or another independent third party to not only reestablish scientifically based f ing ranges for each facility but also those staffers concrete limits on training ratios at the facility level these ratios along with the current training to certified professional controller ratio breakdown of the workforce by facility must be published in the f a s annual workforce plan third standardized training must be continued to be the foundation for the development of skilled and capable air traffic controllers the f a a must stop and thank you for the opportunity to testify before you today on the vice president of the f a a managers association i'm here and i know annual leave my comments do not represent the f a a the f a a managers associations mission is to promote excellence in public service and in particular represent the managers who ensure aviation safety and efficiency among those we represent are the front line managers who train and oversee the nation's air traffic controllers it is critical that you know that to become a free line manager each of our traffic front line managers must first serve successfully as an air traffic controller i would like to focus my comments on three areas first i would like to address the new controllers second the need to increase the minimum number of supervisors within the f a a and third views on how the system is functioning it is undeniable that there is a need for additional controllers however it must be noted that with the hiring of new controllers management and oversight is critical proper supervision is essential to a safe aviation system and we believe that the best person to provide that oversight is a train and dedicated front line manager i've been hearing from managers across the united states that the new recruits are eager and enthusiastic they are up for the challenge of an accelerated and rigorous training program the main difficulty we foresee is that the abundance of training will cause a backlog of simulation time as they compete with other forms of recurrent or remedial training although there are naturally some exceptions we have every reason to be optimistic about the new batch of air traffic control recruits lack of front line managers oversight during training is a very big problem once training is being completed oversight of these new newly started five controllers is essential i was hired by the f a a in one thousand nine hundred three assigned a little rock talent trait on a completed training at the tower at the age of nineteen so i can identify with the newer controllers the difference between then and now is that in one thousand nine hundred one through eighty three we had approximately twenty six hundred frontline managers and fully staffed training departments today these numbers have been diminished by hundreds unfortunately if we walk into the situation with eyes wide open it is come to our attention that there are some currently in the workforce disparaging our new hires we believe these stories to be an unfortunate mischaracterization mischaracterization of our new recruits the enthusiasm of today's new recruits as enhanced the overall morale the number of facilities we appreciate their dedication and welcomed to the teens these new recruits have brought passion and a youthful energy back into a work force that has been plagued by contractual disagreements and low morale our organization is very concerned that a lack of sufficient oversight and mentoring could lead them towards a path to failure essentially it is about providing support for the controllers this is true whether a facility is fully staffed or severely understaffed the oversight requirement is still the same oversight is essential as an association increasing the number air traffic front line managers has been and still remains our number one priority and pending f a a reauthorization legislation the f a a statistics show that there is clearly a link in the air traffic environment between the levels of supervision safety according to our research the minimal number of front line managers needed to effectively supervise our air traffic control system is two thousand and sixty we arrived at this number by conducting a facility by facility audit based on our collective experience of what the appropriate level should be the f a a managers association is out for only that the number of front line managers should not be based on a ratio to the number of controllers f a a has long used ratios but ratios clearly do not make sense the job of a front line manager is not characterized by how many people they supervise we believe that a rigidly fixed ratio system fails to recognize the operational significance of the supervisors duties these men and women are not office managers they are operational managers leading in the day to day delivery of safety and efficiency services to our customers in a snapshot we are currently understaffed we see upcoming retirements in our ranks our employment  of qualified applicants is diminishing with their own retirements and those we are charged with supervising our new management oversight is more critical now than ever before finally the air traffic control system is the safest and most efficient system in the world our goal is not only to keep it that way but also to make it better we have some stress points to present some management challenges but we believe that together we can meet the challenges about today and tomorrow i would like to again thank this committee for inviting me to testify and i'm available for your questions the chair thanks you mr connelly and i will ask a few questions and ask mr p try and then get to the other members i know that we have several members here with questions as well  are the guy here on the speaking for the f a a today and realizing that you have been in your position i guess since october november of last year and went around to make these my concerns over the number of controllers that are retiring the experience controllers who are leaving at a higher rate than the f a a i mean a much higher rate than the f a a anticipated or projected  e difference between the number of certified controllers versus non certified or those new hires are in training and of course the runway incursions that have taken place on sixteenth and i think the first quarter first half of this year i think there is a correlation between everything that's going on here and do you share the same concern not only the fact that there are more experienced controllers leaving that there are fewer certified controllers on the job than they have anticipated the fact that there are controllers who were working accident was not a controller error it was discovered that he only had two hours sleep in a twenty four hour period so those are concerns genuine legitimate concerns and i think everyone hansen and i just wonder are they concerned that you share as well mr chairman indeed let me actually for clarity let me as answer the runway incursion piece first because i'd like to move the microphone a little closer yes or thank you of those sixteen runway incursions only six were operational errors by controllers none that we know of had any fatigue aspects to them the other eight were pilot deviations into her vehicle on the surface of the airport and in a couple of those cases the controllers actually were really on the ball to prevent something from getting worse in those situations you probably saw the article in usa today concerning pilot fatigue as well so let's start there if i might because i've been an airline pilot for nearly thirty five years and you know since the one nine hundred twenty s running this business fatigue has always been present not just for controllers but pilots flight attendants mechanics i think there's something really unique about to happen next week next week the f a a will start their first ever global symposium on fatigue for all markers all those categories i just talked to when i was at my previous employer we actually talked to some of the people who are leading scientific technologies who have developed techniques and software to allow companies to actually predict fatigue look at what the cyclists look at the recovery time after long duty days this will all be discussed at this fatigue seminar and t s p as one of their big recommendations they're going to be there in force and this is the first time that we've had the entire aviation community really looking at that how do we handle this from a data driven scientific point of view which i think is the right approach and i am i'm aware of i compliment the f a a and i think that's been urged by both the i g and the g a o as well so it's a step in the right direction and hopefully we will learn some things as a result in the number of controllers are retiring five per day the most experienced controllers is that obviously is more than the agency anticipated there probably are several reasons why but i mean  in your opinion why is this happening why are so many experienced and you heard dr dillingham his testimony that only a handful of these controllers retired because of mandatory retirement they chose to retire and why is that first of all i'd like to update you on the numbers that we see today because i think that that's instructive we have missed our projections over the past couple of years by around one hundred twenty five per year hundred twenty five controllers retired more than we were planning this year we are running ten over right now what we're planning at this point in time for kind of a run rate of about seventeen over eight hundred nine retirees is what we were planning you know the reasons for mr chairman clearly personal decisions but i won't deny that the labor atmosphere may have something to do with it you would agree that i mean everyone that has testified before the in the last two years has acknowledged there is there is a problem with morale within the controller workforce and the relationship between the f a a and the controllers one of the reasons i took the job is i came from a background of a lot of experience with a lot of different labor unions in good times and bad times we're trying to move it along a little bit there's a little bit of buying the outset program i think as a demonstration will be our first  test whether this workforce can work together between management and labor to handle those issues since i have limited time we have other members that one want to ask question the c e o i was out at the academy in i think it was in november a number of the lack of experienced people coming into the profession as opposed to a time when many controllers who were entering the workforce had military experience or past experience in it is there reason why that is happening happening why why we do not have the number of experience controllers coming from the military side retiring or leaving the military and coming into to the f a a as a controller the bulk of our hires last year did come either out of the military or what we call our c t i schools which i know you're familiar with now when you say coming out of military i spoke that with some of your recruits and trainees that came out of the military but they were not controllers they were in other positions within the military i was speaking past experience controllers in the college or are you saying that most of your trainees came had prior experience as a controller in the military no no no these are military people though clearly a big difference yes not i don't i don't deny that but now we're actually running out of the pool of candidates as we do the hiring for two thousand and eight most of the new hires the seventy five hundred candidates i spoke to will be people coming from the general population in central wisconsin and could you give us an update on how that transition has been going since there's been concern expressed by a number of people who had four months of experience and also could you as planned quite smoothly in our opinion it appears to be working well from everything that i've been able to determine there have been some frequency problems radio frequency problems which actually were in existence prior to the translation which we're working on but the general read is it's going well i'm also getting good confidence relative to the osh kosh about which i always go to being an aircraft owner myself and i'm being assured that the controllers  going to be working up there will be adequately trained and ready for that of that i think one of the aspects of osh kosh this year which will be interesting it was with the increased cost of fuel and showing us we're seeing a dramatic and i mean a dramatic entails mr p trying wouldn't characterize him as negotiations there have been some settlement offers and concepts moving back and forth over the past few months we refresh one here this week which was presented  space they are handouts are going to wrong sectors going to wrong airports by the way all this documentation is documented at the facility level they do have the statistics on this and the republic sector in those sectors that air space was designed monetization process its two sectors a high on a low they do not have enough staffing to be combined the position so therefore they are now having to work that as one sector working twice the capacity of traffic trying to go through there and it is not working well at all they have this month as far as over time they have scheduled a hundred twenty nine hours of eight hour shifts to controllers to work this airspace sixty times they've used ten hour days so controllers of had to work sixty times ten are long days the month of july they always get they've already scheduled hundred thirty four shifts of eight hours of overtime several controllers there out of the last thirty weeks that works twenty six weeks six day weeks trainees are being assigned overtime for flight data flight data processing flight plan information and stuff like that for the controllers they currently have thirty seven certified professional controllers  ones medical disqualified will retire this year one has been selected for supervisor job which by the way are hundred staff across the country and like to control the workforce they have one mandatory retirement this year for eligible by the end of two thousand and nine they currently have nine trainees one of them probably will check out this year and certify fully to possibly at the end of next year so if that sounds like a rosy picture to you i want to drink with you so that sounds like a problem a lot of the walking as far as ashutosh is concerned they're going to have more trouble with that kind of low staffing numbers they don't have enough people to open up those positions they just gave that air space to i don't see that as being a mission that that's not that's not going to rosy and that's just indicative of what's going on across the country i think just for you let me clarify so i understand what you just said before i go and repeat that you said that what percentage of the controllers were twenty six weeks six hour days i didn't say a percentage sir they told me i asked if that was indicative of what's going on in the facility for everybody and the reply back was yes so i would say the majority of controllers have been working six day work week since january when that airspace was over i don't have the number but i certainly can find out for you what the percentage is thank you the chair now recognizes the gentle lady from california ms richard only gone has taken place for the last two years significantly most of these employees are still classified as developmental and the data tells us alarming numbers when i go to my next set of notes more specific to we talked about today that you feel is appropriate is thirty five however there are several locations where it's well over that number and according to our notes here the  recommends that the f a a convene a working group to identify on a case by case basis the appropriate level of developmental controllers that should be assigned to each facility has that happen the working group has been established and they've had a couple meetings already moreover one of the reasons i'm establishing a vice president of technical training is to put some real high level of focus on these very types of issues i'm a young freshman here not we don't have the product out there a working group is working ok thank you so when can we expect that that will be done i'll give you an update on that your office ok to the whole committee i'm sure there are concerns my next key point that i wanted to go over effects my area personally prefer to thousand and six the controller contract pay levels have had no financial incentives to move to a new more complicated and more demanding facility under the pay scales of the new contract many of the controllers would actually have to take a reduction in pay to move to a new facility there is a can this structural imbalance is creating a shortage of season person personnel at high level demanding facilities so my question  is how many folks have actually been offered jobs at l a x and have turned them down do you know i'll have to get that information for you specifically i would like to say however that the f a a did recognize that issue and we began  offering relocation bonuses to the seasoned controllers right now we've had two rounds of those entities facilities like southern california tracon here dallas we've had over one hundred people or nearly all nearly one hundred people except those moves were into round three and four of those so we finally it looks like we have a tool that is starting to move people into the right locations and how long do you intend upon continuing that program as the workforce changes and as people retire in the makeup of the facility changes i think this is going to be an ongoing process to get the right people in the right place and the right way to approach it ok and then my last question is in september of two thousand and four the f a a determined  writing the required management to staff two more swing shift per day why has the agency even with the average of two point six overtime shifts per day at l a x filled every day this year to staff the swing shift at l a x with the required numbers but we staffed to traffic and when that determination was made in two thousand and four you say the f a a determined in two thousand and four i'm not sure what assumptions were made relative to that in two thousand and four what i'd like to offer is let me take a look at that take a look at our current staffing and how we're staffing to traffic and try to make some sense of have for you ok and we did specter then writing back to this committee because as i said it's spare we will keep that in mind the next time you go over the chair thanks the gentle lady and now recognizes the gentleman from texas mister thank you mr chairman thank all of you for being here today there is no doubt that operational errors that's when controllers allow airplanes to get too close together and operational deviations and that's when controllers allow airplanes to enter another cold controlled airspace without permission are on the rise nationally at the houston trade connett george bush intercontinental near district in houston errors are up over two thousand percent from last year deviations are up over nine hundred percent while staffing is down and overtime is up as a matter of fact the f a a added to houston try khans workload when they decided to transfer the beaumont airspace to houston back in april without providing extra staffing for two years i've been discussing this with the f a a and have considered considerably considered other people in the area and we all have said that this was going to occur a predict that there would be no staffing shortages but in truth there are staffing shortages at the houston trade to me there's a clear nexus between staffing shortages overtime usage operational areas areas and deviations and the f a a allows staffing levels at the philippines across the country like houston tricon d while even at this hearing saying things are going to be better it seems to me like the f a a predictions on staff are like predictions by the weather folks weather people are the only ones i know that can consistently be wrong and keep their jobs and to me it seems like that's what's occurring with the f a a in their predictions as long as i've been on this committee things are getting better we have been hearing we find out things are getting worse i want to know when staffing shortages are going to stop and actually staffing will increase and when it is over time especially mandatory overtime going to stop and overtime will be reduced can you tell me when that's going to occur we are staffing up each year for the next ten years and each year we're adding more controllers and we actually expect to have more people on board year after year after year so we're actually growing the controller workforce as we do that we expect the staffing situation to get measurably better now we acknowledge and what does measurably better mean well so you have less flux and we've got air traffic controllers retiring because they work six days a week they're working mandatory overtime so when are things going to really get better when we get the new workforce up and running and trained congressman and that's what we're putting as fast as we can one of the reasons i think we're a bit behind is the technology of training i'm used to flight simulators from where i come from that's how we train pilots we're deploying twenty four of those in the next two years twelve this year and twelve next year we're already seeing twenty five to fifty percent reductions in training times from these high fidelity devices you know our ability to hire the workforce is not really an issue we have seventy five hundred people competing for two thousand positions this year what i'm really trying to focus on is how do we train them faster so they can become  full of c p c's faster aren't you concerned about safety but cutting training time down by one year actually we found out in the airline industry is that because of the use of simulators we were able to reduce the footprint which actually the student liked as well so they can get out there and do their job faster and they're better trained these are these are fantastic devices and i believe you agree that morale is worse morale is a challenge i will not do you agree that morale is worse or is it better well since i'm new here i'm not sure what the reference point in those but if you've been there in november november to getting better or worse since november morale of air traffic controllers people who work in the system it doesn't feel to me like it's changed measurably since i've been on the job i want to ask mr forty some questions you heard the answers was morale well first of all it's getting better get more i think it's getting worse and that's why it well because people are being treated with very much disrespect they're working a lot more time position than they used to in the past where you work more time if you're getting more personnel because the person we're getting our trainees are not certified to work on you when you claim to and if you've got to train someone you're thinking for two people you're thinking for yourself and you think it for the person sitting on the front in front of the scope i'd like to address that issue about the simulator training is wonderful stuff but it works for about twenty five percent of our workforce because we're talking about power simulators seventy five percent of the workforce is on the radar environment we've had simulators for since i came in the agency twenty four years ago so to tout this simulator stuff that's going to increase training mate yeah we'll probably for the towers interrupting but i'm down to a few seconds why are traffic controllers retiring at a record rate time but the g a o issued a report in two thousand and two and said that to you may be facing a retirement crisis in two thousand and two the chair now recognizes the gentle lady from they don't have a contract the same time that if it is trying to bring in new new hires and it takes time to train them what are you doing to keep the ones that you already have presumably all who are already trained so that they don't retire when they don't have to there are hundreds of them in that category i would think that you'd want to keep your train to people what are you doing to mr crocker krakowski to that sure so one of the things that we're doing is we pretention bonuses for our key facilities right now which create a monetary reward for people who are retirement eligible not to retire we have about fifty of those have been accepted we've just started the program right now clearly as i spoke to in my opening remarks we would like to get the labor issues settled down and moving more productively as a team going forward and i are trying to figure out how we can work together better on some of the projects and i think because of the history of the labor dispute that's been here for the past couple years it's going to take a little time to file this out but i can assure you i'm going to work as hard as i can toward a probably the best way to resolve that labor situation is to go back into negotiations so you have any intentions of doing that said we do have we've forwarded a settlement offer to napco this week and we're awaiting their response when group first so we've never been contacted you think you talk to the people that are actually doing the training and the people are actually working but you want to get their perspective on how to do this that is indicative of what the f a a has been doing for the last two three years it's their way or the highway and guess where they're going the twenty two hundred controllers i can leave today are going to go for the highway and i don't care how many new people you bring up the system is going to grind to a halt and it's just a matter of time well we've we've already had a number of hearings on the whole labor question and it keeps coming up and i'm just waiting for some kind of breakthrough here where the two sides the management and the and the workers can truly work together to come to a meeting of the minds because that's not how your so called contract was arrived right now is so we're going to continue to have i think these kinds of hearings and it seems as though the fundamental issue here really is the willingness on both sides to  table so right now i'm hearing that you've made another offer and that doesn't seem to do the job so that's just an expression of frustration on my part that i'm hoping for the time when  able to sit down and get to what i think is a fundamental reason that these various problems are currying with all your people retiring by the droves the matter what bonuses you put in there thank mr chairman the chair thanks you and now recognizes the gentleman from north carolina mister thank you mr chairman not quite sure how to do this i've been to this hearing before as a member forty years of flying we've got same problem delays more i ride on the money it's about morale single best source controllers best source of problem solving is in this group of experience folks that are leaving everyday there's a huge morale problem at f a a refuses for my ten years to address you're absolutely right mr hayes it's a significant morale problem it's a policy decision of course for the administration on the one hand with the congress help to try to get the parties together there are one hundred one different reasons why controllers today are to sing to retire at the top of many controllers lists that we've spoken to has been the contract situation family considerations financial considerations medical they all enter into it but for the most experienced controllers who see their retirement calculations essentially kept that's a significant factor for them to consider that they have to consider sides i think this what mr for he said about the conversation not taking place in a number of different areas that we found that to be true to and have similar conversation my concern is that we don't end up with a forensic kind of approach to this as opposed to dave approach and that is to say if we're talking about control or fatigue if we're talking about operational areas if we're talking about runway incursions that i think the seriousness of the issue is going to make the parties we would hope make the parties come together and address it before we really have a catastrophe that pushes whatever it is it keeping you from talking constructively among yourselves and once that truce is declared then attack the problem whatever they may be because we've got to keep these folks without controllers next year and matter two decades for somewhere so eagerly or publicly and figure out how you're going to get this thing done i'm ready to go back to the table i just would point out that we didn't have these problems and we had a contract that was agreed to by the parties we didn't need retention bonuses we didn't have to go to retirees and say come on back to work we don't have paygrade i think it was over marion blakey great i think it was over the acting administrators paygrade and i think that the stopping point is the white house on a whim be frankly and until it comes down from on top that they or increased numbers of errors because of all this mess what two steps let's go start with the most clearly to make it attractive for controllers for retirement eligible not to retire they are good at their would echo mr krakow ski's comments on his first point and what i would offer as a second point to get on the ball with regard to facility training when we see differential percentages in terms of certified professional controllers versus controllers in training at some facilities ranging into the thirty's and forty percent or even one facility mentioned on our statement sixty seven percent of the rochester tower clearly facility training is an urgently needed item and f a a needs to pay attention to it we commend their effort on the work group they need to kick that into high gear know i think you know certainly we should do whatever we can to stop the exodus experience controllers and also with regard to the development of controllers that are here we were losing  increasing percentage of developmental controllers are being lost after they come out of the academy somehow that has to be addressed because that's another leak each that stops from having adequate staffing july first of all we need to stop the attrition of our controllers and that means going back to the table and that means negotiating and agreed to an ratified agreement we don't have that we don't have anything that we need to staff the system and  we need to staff a system based on scientific methods that determine what the system needs for staffing by facility they haven't done that there right now staffing the budget i believe that both sides are in love with the past the pendulum swings of the past that makes it very difficult for both sides to come together the association itself has no position on this issue but from my personal opinion we need to move forward clearly with the labor dispute and move beyond these and get to the real issues of the safety of the air traffic control system and the services provided to the flying public and i would have to echo what these other gentleman has said that the training program has to be streamlined to the point that we can re staff our facilities quickly enough to manage the rights to retirement that are coming  so we get agreement on trade and we just have to figure out how to get there i think the chairman addressed that then the what about this developmental controller issue and the training issue missed for it why are we losing the developmental controllers i think there's a number of reasons one they're not getting training well there so what are they doing there are getting training well they know they basically there are a lot of stats that they're sitting around and absolutely plus two there they're not paid well enough so they're out getting other jobs where they go developmental control or one of the issue i had a briefing a discussion on the simulators yesterday most for you seemed to say that you don't believe they can address much of the problem but it seems to me that some of the problem with developmental controllers could be addressed i think simulator training is a good thing the problem when you when you bring twenty four tower simulators that's going out twenty four towers to howards make up about twenty five percent to thirty percent of our patrol workforce the rest of our workforce is on their radar control and they have their own simulators that has simulators that training is not speeded up at all so it's great that we can speed up the controllers ability in the tower to give certified quicker that we need to do that and we should continue to do that but it's not an end all be all do we patiently on these i understand that the military decided people couldn't use them really remotely they needed to be on ation actually we're deploying twelve of the twenty four this year of the other twelve next year but i mean don't you know and what percentage of the problem do that take care of in terms of developmental controllers that powered it helps in let's say you have a simulator at all here you can also turn that very simulator into a milwaukee control tower simulator so actually it serves a lot of different functions other than just the o'hare facility right but all air is the i mean there's there's so much downtime you're saying that all these sites can share them let mean different and access them the patiently remotely because again i understand the military had some problems with that is another aspect of losing the developmental controllers we're talking about a candidate who has completed the academy and is now at their first duty station and for one reason or another they drop out it would seem to me that depending on why they drop out some of this some of this screening can take place at the academy so that if we're going to lose them let's let's lose them sooner rather than later i think they're used to be a test upon graduation if you didn't pass the test you didn't go on further and i'm not sure that test is still in place in terms of once you complete the academy ok one last quick question mr are we doing some comprehensive attempts at exit surveys for all of these dropouts and asking them why mr de fazio if i may my office responded to requests from chairman costello to conduct an audit of new controller training failures and we're looking at the rate of those failures and the reasons for those that would be very helpful thank you chair thanks the gentleman and now recognizes the gentleman from michigan mr  to get the facts and figures on that it varies by facility varies by function so i don't have the specific answer for you but i can research and get back to you long as three three and a half years to become fully qualified at the pounds on the complexity of the size of the facility the background of the student it's one of the actual strengths of the training program is that when you have people who can a qualifying come to you with innate skill sets that they call in naturals out there the training program set up so they can certified faster and you know when you're certified faster you also get the pay raises as you move through your certification so there's incentive for the students to work hard as well so you know we actually we've watched over the past three years the time the certification actually shorten and we're putting more people out so the numbers are looking good right now  can give you any specific numbers you'd like but sir i'm just trying to get the full picture generally you start him out in the smaller tower and they work up to the more complex traffic situations not necessarily where kind of a unique situation where we're actually putting new developmental controllers in some of the higher level facilities and that's somewhat of a first for the f a a but again the training program is designed to make them successful i assure you they don't they're not put position either as a developmental or a c p c until they're ready and qualified what educational requirements do they have to before they begin the training i believe is just high school sir just a high school and they paid well they go through the training yes they are they're paid throughout their training experience at oklahoma city and then when they show up at the facility they actually become a developmental and they get quite a pay raise at that point  combine the miami tower and the trade con in the near future and it's something that has some of us a little bit a little bit concerned and the question really is has has a controller staffing study been conducted to date on both the tower and take on because it's my understanding at the risk what was called the safety risk management plan that was scheduled for earlier this week was postponed do that to bring the process of the combining to happen congressman i'd like to offer to give you a detailed briefing on the specifics of the entire approach at that facility i can assure you that we would never actually pull the trigger on something like that until the staffing affects are understood through the study and that we've done the safety risk management study as well the chair would tell the gentleman from michigan that his time has expired and  that's a great quality can give you a private briefing the chair now recognizes let me say that we have two votes on the floor we have about less than five minutes to get to the floor but harder mr hall has been here the entire time and i want to recognize mr hall from thank you mr chairman i just quickly want to ask mr koski you commented that you were working to improve labor relations and i assume that's not just with not because i remember hearing last year i'm not sure if you probably weren't on board then but we had not just the controllers but the airline pilots the flight attendants the mechanics and even the attorneys in the f a a joined the union because they were complaining that they couldn't be we i have over forty unions in my organization and because nath because the big elephant like the pilots were pilots union where i came from where the big elephant they get the most attention but i don't want to proceed with a labor strategy that's just focused on one labor group by that we really do as a as a management team want to look at in treating all the labor organizations equally and that certainly is my passion sir equally and fairly  ali and i just quickly would ask mr scobell you you mentioned a significant confusion over who is in charge of certain towers i believe could you describe quickly what that means so i apologize if i was if i was misunderstood on that i didn't mean to say that there was a confusion over who was in charge at towers but rather confusion in the field and even on the part of some headquarters officials over who was in charge of nd mr for if i may just last ask you what's the effect on the experience controllers working in the tower when thirty to thirty five percent of the staffing are developing train who may be needing coaching or calling up some of the more experienced controllers for advice or instruction first of all when you have that many trainees at a facility in a tower that means you've probably got a very serious staffing problem to begin with because you have fewer certified controllers so you're now training more often you're working a position behind a person that's a novice in most cases or a very limited experience and it's very fatiguing it's very hard to not say anything panel i do have some other questions and i will submit them to you in writing we have a second panel that some of them i believe have flights out that we need to get to so let me thank all of you for your testimony it's been very informative and then i thank all of you on behalf of the members of the subcommittee the subcommittee will stand in recess for fifteen minutes and hopefully those of you who can take want to take a break will take a break and be here before fifteen minutes so that when we come back from our recess we can immediately go to the second panel again the chair thanks to all of you for your testimony in the subcommittee stands in recess and as you are being seated let me introduce the second panel mr don chapman and philadelphia international airport facility representatives from the national air traffic controllers association f a a certified professional controller controller gentlemen again we appreciate your patience we understand that some of you may have a flight to catch so we will immediately go to you for your testimony we would ask that you summarize your testimony the testimony your representative for nearly my entire career i am a qualified instructor and a controller in charge understaffing is a serious issue that has affected the entire traffic system many facilities such as the new york tricon miami center the southern california trick on or out right dangerous in terms of their low staffing others are facing different kinds of issues all as a result of the controller staffing crisis philadelphia tower and trick on one of one hundred thirty seven combined facilities within the f inventory control or certify in both the control tower and radar approach control combined facilities like philadelphia enjoy the lowest operational cost and lowest error rates of any type of facility within the f a a system prior to september two thousand and six hundred nine controllers were authorized at philadelphia in march of two thousand and seven the f a a implemented a staffing range reducing the number to a minimum of seventy one controllers approximately a thirty five percent reduction in authorized staffing in contrast when i arrived at philadelphia in one nine hundred ninety three there were approximately eight trainees and few if any eligible for retirement philadelphia tower enter a con currently has sixty nine certified controllers and eighteen trainees fifteen controllers are eligible to retire by the end of the year in an f a a staff study dated june of two thousand and seven the f a a itself noted that philadelphia tower tray con is faced with the possibility of a severe staffing shortage of certified professional controllers do the number of controller retirements the study went on to say the loss of qualified controllers supervisors and support staff is creating a strain on the required operational staffing and the training of developmental controllers assigned to the facility traditionally high density terminal facilities of always recruited experienced controllers from lower density facilities to fill vacancies due to the staffing shortage has begun introducing newly hired controllers with no experience into these top tier facilities creating an extreme burden on facility training as well as a drastic reduction in experience level at philadelphia for example a typical crew of seven controllers manning the tower had an average combined total of forty to fifty years experience today the tower cab may be staffed with controllers with only one to two years of experience each because of the staffing crisis the f a a announced its intent to split philadelphia tower and tracon into two separate facilities in january two thousand and nine the f a a also intends to separate miami orlando memphis more facilities after that the f a a itself admits that separating the facility will actually require increasing the number of controllers and management necessary to staff the facility this action will allow the f a a to misleadingly report that they have more certified controllers when they will have only changed the structure of the facility the combining facilities will remove the optimal seamless environment and efficiencies that have existed for approximately forty years and also provide the f excuse to further cuts salary levels of controllers the f a a is compound and staffing problems rather than easing them instead of allowing the controller ranks to become healthier the f a a has continually reduced the active controller staffing levels in favor of moving controllers to management or other non controlling positions while controller staffing levels remain inadequate management positions have been increased in philadelphia in the past four years sixteen certif controllers have been transferred to non controlling positions for example in two thousand and four philadelphia had nine supervisors for second or third level managers and approximately eighty nine controllers and work four hundred seventy five thousand operations in two thousand and seven philadelphia has seven second level managers twelve supervisors and as few as eighty two controllers and we work five hundred sixteen thousand operations additionally the f a a has made questionable management decisions regarding staffing earlier this year a certified veteran controller who was also a qualified instructor was given an incentive bonus of twenty thousand dollars under the f a s incentive program to transfer from philadelphia to chicago shortly thereafter the f a a offered a new incentive bonus of twenty thousand dollars to attract controllers to transfer to philadelphia in other words the f a a paid twenty thousand dollars to attract a replacement for the controller the agency just paid twenty thousand dollars to leave staffing shortages have created a situation where it is nearly impossible to allow current certified controllers to have meaningful participation in the development of vital procedures and equipment leading to either the development of unsafe changes or equipment deployment delays and cost overruns due to staffing shortages controllers routinely work ten hour shift as a result schedule time between shifts a shortened resulting in exacerbated t would not otherwise exist or be as acute tired controllers work slower and often when controllers are worn out they tend to slow down in the interest of safety the act of providing training can itself be extremely fatigu live training requires an instructor to have to try to anticipate what a trainee will say or do and be able to instantaneously override or correct the trainee if they make a mistake in the fast paced environment of air traffic control this can be extremely taxing many times the instructor must slow operations to maintain an adequate safety margin adding to delays controller training has also been detrimentally impacted by the staffing shortage training the briefs are rushed because instructors are needed to staff other positions this is reduce the quality of instruction the next generation is receiving these are but a sample of the myriad of issues facing the air traffic control system today thank you for allowing me the opportunity to testify and i look for questions as chapman the chair thank you and now recognizes mr chairman costello ranking member mr p try and members of the aviation subcommittee my name is steven wallace and i'm an air traffic controller at miami center located in miami florida i started my career with the f a a november thousand ninety one and in addition to my duties as an air traffic controller i've had the honor in the privilege of representing my coworkers in one thousand nine hundred six when i began air traffic controller training at miami center there were one hundred ninety six fully certified controllers one hundred  eighty trainees and we handled one point five million operations a year today there are one hundred ninety two controllers that are certified eighty four trainees and we post an annual number exceeding two point five million operations our target staffing number has always been two hundred seventy nine controllers fifteen years ago a busy day at miami center meant that we would handle five thousand aircraft in a day today that number is ten thousand years ago on a busy day it was mandated that the busiest positions be staffed with three controllers five years ago that number was two now it's not uncommon to have no one to help you when you're working ten thousand operations in a day when controllers get two airplanes too close together it's called an operational or fifteen years ago twelve operational errors and here in miami center was a big deal now the agency believes that twenty five is ok in two thousand and seven the f a a adopted the term proximity event for minor errors and then quit tracking those as a result the real number of errors that we make is not known but in the phase eyes safety was never compromised the last thing that anyone wants is for two or a crop to get too close to each other it's my job to ensure that never happens and my coworkers and i meet that challenge every day with passion of professionalism each of us is dedicated to seeing the passengers get from point a to point b safely not ninety nine point five percent of the time but one hundred percent of the time i don't want my family on an aircraft that is less protected by less than a one hundred percent fully certified competent air traffic controller constantly working in this manner wears on you though as the numbers of controllers in miami in the rest of the the better resource management they speak of means mandatory six day work weeks comprised of ten hour days for me and my colleagues when we signed up for this job we knew that we would be giving up many holidays with our families time with our friends at neighborhood cookouts and soccer games with our children on the weekends it was a commitment that we made we did not want to make a commitment to give up our lives with no hope in sight and the horizon getting farther away many of my fellow coworkers have retired as soon as they were able because they didn't want to spend the rest of their lives working this way the current working conditions coupled with the increased stress of working at your highest performance level while not making a mistake has taken its toll on many my coworkers i've watched as many of them have become so stressed out so fatigued so preoccupied with not making a fatal mistake that they've quit rather than run the risk of being the person on position when an accident occurs two years ago miami center was designated as a focus facility by the f a a due to our staffing shortage developmental controllers report into the facility then this past year the f a a implemented the functional training program at miami center and eliminated the seasoning that used to be a prerequisite to advancement as a result of the new training program many of those developmental controllers have sat doing nothing for the past year and a half many of the trainees may still check out within the usual four years but under the new program it will take that much time to certify because of delays not because they're gaining valuable seasoning time the developmental controllers that are being hired are leaving in record numbers because they do not want to make the same kind of commitment that i made and why should they pay their pay has been cut by thirty percent and the working can do or not except at miami center fourteen developmental controllers have resigned since july of last year that's fourteen more than all the other years that i've worked for the f a a they see the same thing that i see there is no quick fix to the problem this last year for developmental controllers failed the training program i also watched as twelve of my coworkers left due to the middle or physical illness from stress and fatigue while our numbers have been depleted due to unexpected attrition the f a a has also taken many supervisors and moved others to jobs outside of talk that are talking to airplanes we have supervisors who are responsible for us we have supervisors who are responsible for as few as four controllers ten years ago they used to have to watch eight or nine we have managers supervise too it's obvious that the number of chiefs has grown proportionally with the number of errors without including the expected retirements are supervisors and staff assignments the stress related losses the training failures and the resignations of miami center represent sixteen percent of the workforce lost at the end of this year there will be nineteen more controllers eligible to retire at miami center and more next year and still more th while airspace changes and technological advances have enabled me to handle more airplanes there's a breaking point air traffic control is a very unique occupation and not everyone can be in or traffic controller it takes time to train someone to do the job the current staffing level at my facility like many major facilities across the country cannot adequately sustain the level of safety the flying public expects and that air traffic controllers demand if something doesn't change because the f a a has failed to take the necessary steps to fix the air traffic worked ten years at the los angeles international airport i got my training in united states marine corps proud of that the f a a will tell you that staffing does not affect safety and that is simply not true in one thousand nine hundred one there was a scenario that developed there was a  and as a result thirty four people died that night is the exact same thing is happening in facilities across the country today happens in mine every day with the training as the developmental come in they're certified they are making mistakes and there is anybody there to help catch them we had one situation where a controller came in was certified on the first sector made a mistake and it resulted in three aircraft coming too close together over the skies of burbank she went immediately to the psychiatrist's office has been back yet we have another situation where a young man certified on position less than a month first position he's got six or seven to go puts two aircraft on a collision course same altitude doesn't recognize it the t cas takes over the flight cr intervene and they save the situation again those types of things are happening on a daily basis as our veteran workforce reaches retirement eligibility the effort to pass a baton just begun too late my facility handles two point two million operations fifty thousand dollars spent in overtime four years ago we spent four million last year it's a six hundred percent increase there were ten operational errors four years ago this this year want to pace it forty to be a four hundred percent increase these mistakes will eventually result in a catastrophe the fact that they haven't at this point is is amazing to me we're totally mission oriented we're committed as controllers to getting the job done we will do what the agency asks us to do but they continue to ask us to do more with less  unlike my counterparts explained earlier at our facility we've actually consolidated work with assigned more sectors to fewer people so it's a it's the exact opposite response to the problem that they're doing elsewhere in the country and makes no sense as the staffing decreases the automatic reaction is to reduce the amount of time controllers are signed to the system controller position this eliminates the redundancy provided by the extra set of eyes and ears and again it does reduce safety the further completely losing it one one career veteran he's twenty two years and he has five years please mandatory retirement walked into my office about two weeks ago and i've lost it he had just had a situation where it was the breaking point tears in his eyes again leave goes direct to the psychiatrist office he'll never work airplanes again these these these are statistics when you look at the whole but there tragedies individually two weeks ago at the southern california tracon bruce johnson the f o vice president for terminal operations sat and said you know i'm afraid that if we reverse course now things will get worse when we just wait another year and see what happens those are the type of people that are leading this organization have completely lost track of the stresses and strains that we deal with on a daily basis because their experience is so far back it's hard to just go and call and it's extremely frustrating to say was going to take to wake them up and respond to the problem  again i just thank you for the opportunity to testify thanks for the time mr davis thank you and i think all three of you for being here in offering very thoughtful testimony concerning not only your experiences but what you  experienced on the job dealing with some of your your colleagues at the couple questions in to clarify a point or two mr davis you mentioned that at your facility fully qualified controllers went from two hundred sixty one to one hundred sixty and that was due to return that's you were here i think for the earlier testimony with mr caspian and the inspector general in the g a o there koski would give us a list of the reasons why controllers have been retiring but if you had to identify the two main reasons why we are seeing so many experience managerially retired this is usually about five years so you're thinking about it the day you come into the agency you're thinking ok i'm going to go at this date and then you're forced out five years later well now these people are going there and they look at somebody around the say ok i'm leaving because such a difficult time recruiting experience controllers at the f a a in previous years we were able to recruit many military controllers such as yourself when defense jobs and they're paying more and so they're just they're they're being attracted to those other locations there's the work isn't as intense and the pays better so it's a it's a relatively simple equation i think that that's a huge factor in our inability to attract two thousand and four we used two hundred fifty thousand dollars in overtime and in the last twelve months we've used four million dollars in overtime so from forty million dollars and over time and the last twelve months correct just at your facility correct  it's a concern a virus we're looking into and we're having input and we're having a gathering of many people academic people and so on coming in to look at the issue i wonder  dealing with the new recruits the new hires we know why the most experienced controllers are leaving i mean you detail that and we've heard that from others why are the new harshly when when they come out of the academy and they're they coming into the job first thank you i would say that the way the system was set up in the past that you would test at the academy and you would see a seventy five percent or eighty percent attrition rate there there was very stringent hiring practices and huge amount of attrition then when they when an individual finally made it through that and got to facility he's a better candidate what they're doing now is are just shotgun hiring and they're running through they're running through the academy without those those chairman at miami center the primary cause of the developmental departure is pay pay and the working conditions they report to miami center they are told that you will get a progression in certain portions of your when you complete certain portions of your training in the past those types of classes upgrade classes were scheduled out every nine months ten months or so classes would last about a month and a half to two months they would come downstairs to the floor and they would then certify on a position or two and they would get a pay raise you move developmental control or brand new hires who have seventy five thousand dollars with a college debt and a high cost of living areas such as southern california south florida philadelphia and you're paying them thirty percent less you take them to facilities such as miami center you change the training program on them and then don't let them have a chance for any upgrade training for upwards of two years we have folks that have sat in miami center for a year and a half it doesn't take long for the next group the group that's in there after a certain portion realizes they've made such a commitment now they've got to see portion of it through but the people that have just come in sit and look say well if i'm going to be a year and a half i might as well go to work for lockheed martin or another competitor somewhere or better yet go back to flying airplanes which is what i was doing before what i was trying to do out of college and then maybe i can make some money and set a sitting around doing nothing to only that making less and actually tag on to that the f a a just changed the hiring requirements the kids that are here now forgive me for calling kids are very young very dedicated professional some of the hardest working folks that i've seen those folks come into the facility and they've been told you must have a two or four year degree from i select a number of universities cost them seventy five thousand dollars they walk in the first day they get there and three to six months later they're told you no longer have to have this type of education we're going to hire anybody off the street to come do the job well air traffic control from what used to be a career occupation that you felt you had a future into an uncertain occupation it's as if they're working at mcdonald's or seven eleven they have no trust in the agency that they will have a future the agency has no more structure left where you can work in a smaller facility and progress up the ladder they don't have any assurance of where their pay will be where their career will be they can't trust their families to the occupation anymore because the agency has decimated with both mistrust and what they've done with the pay system quite frankly the final question and then i will turn turn to mr p tryon we've heard  some of the new hires because of the reduction in the entry level pay that they are actually out working second jobs in order to pay their college tuitions in order  to to to to live a very expensive areas as you detail mr allison in the country i just wonder from your experience with the new hires in the facilities where you are are you saying that are you seeing new hires that are working in other jobs other than  on the job as a control or we have a few i have one who was a former worked as a computer engineer and he's still doing freelance work he's lucky because he has the skills to do that without actually working and he can still learn additional money and one thing i would add to that is a lot of them are hanging on to see what will happen and they've all given us the impression that look at this isn't fixed within another year or two i'm working on a college degree in another area i'm going to go do something else but they're hopeful that there will be a correction and they want this to be their career they're just not comfortable that it will be their career you a lot of the a lot of the developmental is that we have now wait a very long time to get hired by the f a and they were very committed is mr chapman said they're committed enough to go get a second job to try to make it work there are there are developmental is at miami center that are still trying to find second jobs that will allow them the latitude to have a rotating shift or that will allow them latitude to be gone during certain days of the week so that they can eventually get into a training class the difficulty that they're having in doing that they have a career have a career choice it's very hard to explain to him to someone at a restaurant or at a  hotel for instance that you're in your traffic controller and you need a second job most of the time they feel that you're not going to be committed to that and if you take the second job the f a a will turn it around on you or if you try to better yourself through going through school this just happened with one of our developmental she's having a little bit of difficulty in this training will turn it right right back around on you and say you're not committed to the f a a and you're not committed to your training and if they have a single hiccup in their training then the f a a will use that as a means to try to separate mr davis yes i i'm not specifically aware of individuals that have two jobs but i do see the type of coping mechanisms that are associated with that type of a scenario they're living together you could expand on some of the questions that you asked in i think mr davis you mentioned this is stoning to me and i think some of those number of four million dollars over time you know how much of that was voluntary and how much was not hers is that an important distinction i think it is an important distinction there is a list of  in the facility where they will say do you want to work overtime and there's a list of says that says i don't want to work overtime but i'll work it if you if you have to do it sixty five percent of people at the facility are on the yes left so but they're all we're all being assigned overtime because the agency has to do that to accomplish the mission so it's it's i'm not sure if i've answered your question it's not really we know that we have we know the agency has a right to assign its overtime and they're doing that and have to do that to accomplish the mission is the only way the airplanes can move through the airspace at this point so it's in my mind irrelevant where i'm on the yes list or the no that i get on my if i have two days off i get four calls for overtime every day every weekend in the morning in the evening in the morning in the evening and i'm on  less in our area sometimes people look forward to getting overtime other times they've had enough or it's very inconvenient for them so that they kind of have a way of  working is that done or is it basically people are doing over time whether they want to or not ok what's happened at our facility specifically with a forty percent reduction staffing there's there's no options there's we're all the majority of us are timed out where you can only work six days we can you can only work ten hours a day there isn't anybody to trade it to where there was in the past when staffing was down ten or fifteen or twenty percent there are no options so it's there is an exactly what that means in practice yes or are accepted standard separation is five miles and one thousand feet there is a severity classification for operational errors classic categories a b c minor errors which are eighty percent ninety percent of that total separation or more meaning it's not quite  hundred percent but it's greater than ninety percent or greater than eighty percent of always been considered to be minor errors it still occurs but the f a a recently changed the category from classifying those minor errors as operational errors which are carefully tracked they're put into the f a a administrators handbook that's distributed at the beginning of every quarter that classification was changed to proximity and proximity events while they  were intended in some degree to allow some latitude for air traffic controllers to run airplanes a little bit tighter together in areas where maybe there's a lot of congestion and maybe it was just a slight mistake that those types of situations are no longer tracked it's still an error it's still a mistake safety didn't the safety standard did not change in the fact that the airplanes were not five miles apart  not a thousand feet operated that did not change only the name and we don't count those anymore and as a result of that i can't tell you how many operational errors we've had at miami center this year i just know we had twenty five more which is a sixty seven percent increase in the number of errors over the last x number of years and we're working a million airplanes the chair thanks the gentleman and recognizes the distinguished chairman of the full committee mr over starr and congratulate the chairman on what i think is a historic day here in the congress in passing a real legislation that really puts this country on the right track and did it not only in passing the legislation but by an overwhelming margin i thank the gentleman for the most common performance level controller what is your standard now at my facility if it's roughly two years two years but that's checking out how many positions what they've done with the consolidation recently what used to be an average of about or six or seven sectors that's gone to eight or nine now so it's it's definitely extended my facility the time it takes to certify it seems to me that if it's changed the standard for definition of f t l over over the last fifteen years or so i would say that the definition is still it's it's now c p c versus the definition seems to me to be about the same but the requirements that it takes to become that have increased definitely see that and that's sleight of hand include in and they count on the actual count developmental but don't include first line supervisors who are actually working controls then the numbers cute if they if they weed out the developmental and first line supervisors there are kind of people who are under the rules performing and working at controls only ten percent of the time not full time but i hear you saying developmental controllers three controllers at this position down to two controllers today two hundred ninety seven at our facility done one hundred ninety seven six day work weeks ten hour days you didn't talk about leave time or respite time didn't talk about time away from controls after continuous work at at the boards every one of them came back with the report controllers are over stressed putting in too many hours at controls too many continuous hours of control not enough lead time not enough respite time in the course of the work day not enough training and retraining opportunities and the f b i rejected every one of those reports that was under different administrators under different administrations and then came and then all of that came to a head in hundred one when we had the strike and the firing and well over a billion dollars of federal funds to rebuild the air traffic control workforce and what we heard from one after another administrator in this hearing room was we're getting a better quality control or more experience more savvy with with that workstations they know more this is the nintendo generation and they're there they're better prepared and they're not going to be crybabies because that's what they said about controllers who complained about the factors i just cited so where are we today this is what we're hearing this could be the script of one thousand nine hundred one this could be descriptive in the private sector would accept no one's going to say will willingly work for five years at two years ago pay and then renegotiate our contract five years out in the future based on five or six year old no one no one will do that except members of congress when increases either but we asked for it and and that's the problem but it's the same problem resurfacing all over again and i've been through it for twenty five years and i'm exasperated at what is happening and i further exasperate that the other body as we affectionately call that crowd over two hundred meters away from here hasn't moved our aviation bill that has passed away to at least partial resolution of the problem you're citing today i find it that there is no recognition of history repeating itself on the part of the managerial echelon at f a a and i'm i'm sorry you have to be here but i'm glad you're here to tell us a story i've seen a situation where the controller has twenty seven aircraft in her section and in this particular situation there was a k c one thirty five that had  fire on board and that controller had to move twenty seven aircraft out of the airspace to give that tanker room to dump fuel so they could get on the ground before the plane blew up and the other s p l dog gathered around support of this woman and the first line supervisor was skilled capable the same she got that are correct on the ground no incident she and the other five coworkers were etched in sweat you believe in what you're doing you know you have lives at stake you know you have the safety of helpless people in your hands depending upon your skill and your level of alertness and your ability to to be at your top edge every moment of the day we need to respect that we need to do better in this system than the f a a is doing for you today and we're trying thank you thank you and the chair now recognizes a gentle lady from west virginia wise now i can speak for miami center right now when someone arrives at miami center the beginning salary is thirty seven thousand five hundred dollars and it it can go up after six months did you say or is it not until two years it goes up predicated on how many positions a person certifies and in the past they trainees that reported to miami center would immediately be put into certain upgrade training and it would take anywhere from three to four months they would see their first raise then about nine months to a year later they would see another raise and it was incremental but it also went with the seasoning time that they gained in between checking out on certain categories of positions where there was a manual assistant over your or radar controller over here and that has changed now with the new functional training program where they come in and they sit and they do nothing for a year and a half and then they begin what should be a three month training session the last big training session in miami center that was scheduled for three months land it lasted for nine because the a repeatedly changed the training program on the fly they changed the training program and the requirements twice two weeks before christmas to try to facilitate the class and make a little bit better as a result the class continued to get links and and the students became very this disinterested in very disheartened many of them and there were several that lost from that class thank you thank you all three of you blind out and i've heard also from my constituents who are air traffic controllers and i'm proud of their service to the issues less pay more work shorthanded ness i was a little alarmed when you mentioned that more than a little alarmed when you mention the reclassifying of the operational errors and how they i mean what was acceptable twelve is now is acceptable twenty five the number of aircraft that you're dealing with every day i guess my question each one of you is if you could make how do we solve this problem what is the answer is it higher pay is it better training is it so i'll give you chance to give me a top to each one of you thank you i'll i'll go first the answer to each one of your questions is a collective bargaining agreement because each one of those elements is contained within the collective bargaining agreement probably much more so for us than traditional occupations everything within the air traffic system technology development improvements procedures along with the labor issues are all under the umbrella of the collective bargaining agreement without that nothing works thank you and i have to echo what mr chapman says that is first and foremost to resolving the problems of collective bargaining agreement is the absolute foundation for resolving most of the issues as far as the developmental and there may be a unique situation with respect to training we need to go back to the old tried and true method for training air traffic controllers you've got an air traffic controller down in the same length of time that they're going to get it done with this functional training program but you got it done with a lot of experience along the way i actually have three and that's ok with the first one is it is is we're very rule oriented clearly we live and die by the rules and that's why the contract is so important it is critical the second would be to decriminalize operational errors what happens right now is if i have more if i make one mistake a year i will be fired one is that a new development or is that something that's always been that way when it's it's it's it's been it's always been that way but it's a disincentive to be honest about what's really going on  if if i have three years in less than thirty months i can be terminated ok and but you're not necessarily terminated i have seen it i have not it can go is probably some judge mental downgrades and  separations that there would be that at the facilities that are hurting the worse it has to be some support for the traffic management initiatives to to to work a realistic amount of traffic in one thousand nine hundred one after the strike they set up a general aviation reservation system they set up a slot program to recognize the fact that we can't continue handle the same level of traffic with this ng significantly reduced amount of people we can do we're going to hurt somebody all right thank you for your answers thanks for your service chair  it is especially important that congress continue to be engaged in this issue every time we hear testimony every report i have from visiting with air traffic controllers continues to outline the  significant challenges that the air traffic control system faces and i really do want to see this committee our congress and especially the administration realize what significant problems we face today and what how much more difficult this becomes over time in the absence of resolution of staffing issues which perhaps in large part relate to reaching an agreement in regard to collective bargaining i appreciate your testimony here today i think this issue is serious i think it's one that affects the lives have great regard for air traffic controllers who i think face tremendous stresses challenges and perform admirably under under very difficult circumstances so when i say thank you for holding the hearing i'm sincere in that regard i appreciate you in the ranking member making certain that this issue is not not forgotten i have just a couple of questions  s there is there any evidence that the collective bargaining process is on track is there any desire or any evidence that there's a desire to see this issue resolved are we still perhaps in the i don't know that i would we would be the appropriate people to answer that question with detail before i would be the person to take that question from our knowledge out in the field no to be quite honest there's no movement by the agency to make  sincere effort which i assume in and of itself has an effect upon morale as well as retention and recruitment that accurate it tells everybody that there is no respect for them as employees is the clearest answer is there any place within the system that there is a role model for recruitment and retention is there any place any location geographically or any particular program that's working to recruit or retain air traffic controllers within the system  i can tell you in the past there was there was a in the late eighty's there was a system set up where they were having trouble staffing eleven facilities they roll out a program called up a demonstration project to say listen this is going to be an extra pay incentive to go and commit yourself to solving the problem at those facilities high density facilities high possibly areas lasted five years and i responded to that i went to l a as opposed to staying where i was out in the  empire and became committed to solving the problem and that was the reasons i'd say that is it is something that worked in the past it can work and it can work now but i don't know of any any place idea right now i haven't heard if there is one i haven't heard about it so the answer to my question is you have to story nothing in the present and then one of the features that is true in a congressional district like mine that is so rural is the prevalence of contract towers do you have any sense  knowledge about recruitment retention or transfer of traffic controllers between the two systems are they better able to recruit retain or they face the same challenges  well i would say i do have some experience with it i was the representative for one of the sites that was contracted out so i converted one day with f a the next day it was a contractor those facilities that have been contracted out are the lowest level the bottom level or the bottom rung so it's not as intense or not is as it's apples and oranges i believe so yeah and finally mr chairman i'd ask your permission to submit a question or writing to the earlier panel for their response without objection again mr chairman thank you for the opportunity of the chair thanks the gentleman from kansas and thanks all of you for testifying we know that it's been a long day for you hearing that was supposed to start much earlier and was delayed because of votes on the floor let me let me just say that as i've said before and i will say again after hearing the testimony here today from our first panel as well as the three of you gentlemen  am very concerned about where we are today about the staffing levels about the ratio between certified controllers in new hires and trainees the rate of attrition not there is no question and there has been testimony in this room and everyone involved in the air traffic control system recognizes that there is a major problem with city there's a major problem with morale and that i little action in my judgment being taken to address these problems finally i will say that is i think and i hope that the three of you know that in h r twenty eight eighty one in the will help with the current situation but again we thank you for for being here i know you're not used to coming up and testifying before congressional committees and subcommittees your union representatives your president mr for who on the earlier panel they normally are the ones who are testifying and do a very good job in presenting the views but it is good to for this committee and its members to hear directly from those who are on the job and what you're seeing firsthand what you are experiencing so again we thank you for taking the time to offer your testimony here today we wish you well and would ask that you continue to talk to your colleagues and anyone that you can and ask them to call on their united states senators to move legislation that is pending in the senate that passed the house