By the end of July, 17 air traffic controllers are expected to hand in their headsets, leave their aging jobs on Long Island and report to a new office in Philadelphia to manage the skies around New York.
Despite the strong incentives they have been offered to join in, workers – unwilling to uproot themselves and their families – are resisting the move, and some influential members of Congress are helping them fight back.
In a blistering letter sent to the Federal Aviation Administration last week, a group of New York lawmakers, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and majority leader, demanded that the agency abandon its plans to forcefully relocate employees this summer.
Lawmakers argued that the move placed an undue burden on these workers. The FAA’s “forced reassignments,” Mr. Schumer and his colleagues wrote, were “both confusing and outrageous.” Inspectors say their family lives are being disrupted, citing new marriages, disabled children and elderly parents they care for.
The fact that the Senate’s most powerful lawmaker complained so loudly about a tiny group of workers underscores the power of the controllers’ nerve center in Westbury, NY – a labor-intensive workplace whose daunting responsibilities, stressful environment and strong personalities make for a magazine report inspired and the 1999 film “Pushing Tin”.
The anger of air traffic controllers and their supporters is colliding with the FAA’s desperate efforts to find and train enough employees ready to handle the demands of ensuring smooth and safe air traffic in and out of New York airspace – its most complex, after all .
The New York hub has struggled with chronic vacancies for years, making its current staffing levels among the lowest in the country. The FAA hopes that shifting some of the responsibility for the work from New York to a more convenient location of residence will facilitate the recruitment of more air traffic controllers over time, resulting in higher staffing levels and therefore greater aviation safety and efficiency.
However, the agency’s plan also risks losing some of its more experienced controllers who are reluctant to move, which perversely could exacerbate staffing problems.
The moves, scheduled for July 28, are necessary “to improve efficiency and ensure safety in this region,” Bridgett Frey, an FAA spokeswoman, said in a statement.
The move’s target group manages the airspace around Newark Liberty International Airport, which the FAA believes can be done just as easily from Philadelphia as from Long Island. That’s because this group of air traffic controllers uses radar scopes rather than controlling aircraft from a runway tower that oversees takeoffs and landings.
FAA figures show that staffing gaps at Long Island last year affected 4 percent of the 541,136 takeoffs and landings at New York’s major airports last summer. The agency expects the summer flying season, which begins later this month, to be the busiest since 2010.
Air traffic controllers say they, too, are struggling with safety. They say they need to be in the same room with their New York colleagues, as they are now, in order to be able to communicate quickly with them in a crisis.
“It’s an extremely stressful job,” said Joe Segretto, the air traffic controller and president of the local chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which represents the New York airspace hub. For air traffic controllers, he added, forcing the FAA to move away from spouses and children “will create tremendous pressure.”
The closer the moving day gets, the bigger the fight becomes. The FAA has already implemented a 10 percent reduction in flight volume in the New York area to accommodate reduced staffing levels at its New York Terminal Radar Approach Control building in Westbury, known internally as N90. However, further staffing issues could mean there simply won’t be enough air traffic controllers to handle the increased volume planned for the summer, causing delays.
The fate of this handful of employees in a workforce of more than 14,000 has caught the attention of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, even though his workload includes dealing with aircraft assembly problems at Boeing, investigating the cause of recent train derailments and directing that work The fight against what the Biden administration says are “junk fees” levied by airlines is tense.
“The complexity of N90 is more complex than the entire airspace of many countries,” Buttigieg said in an interview with The New York Times in December.
Given the low staffing levels at N90, he added, “We know that more attention is needed there.” According to FAA figures from March, only 59 percent of available controller roles in the building are filled
Last June, the FAA was criticized by the Department of Transportation, its parent agency, for doing too little to address a years-long shortage of air traffic controller personnel. Days after those results were released, United Airlines delayed and canceled flights, affecting 150,000 passengers. United Chief Executive Scott Kirby blamed the FAA for the air traffic controller shortage, which he said exacerbated a situation in which his New York-area pilots were already dealing with bad weather.
The air traffic controllers at N90, housed in a squat, windowless building in suburban Long Island, are responsible for monitoring the early climbs and descents of hundreds of thousands of flights at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports each year – that equates to about 100,000 flights per year, according to FAA data, there are at least 60 per hour in and out of Newark on a typical day or evening shift alone. N90 is Southern California’s second-largest airspace, but arguably represents a more important cog in the overall system, impacting the punctuality and well-being of hundreds of thousands of passengers every day.
The FAA has been struggling with a shortage of air traffic controllers nationwide since the pandemic, leading to training pauses both at its academy in Oklahoma City and on-site at air traffic control centers across the United States. But the N90 staffing shortage was particularly pressing.
Controllers’ duties are so demanding and specialized that they typically require years of experience to perform, including 18 to 24 months of practical training at N90 after work assignments in less busy locations. Westbury’s staffing shortages in recent years have resulted in some air traffic controllers earning nearly $400,000 a year in extra pay, according to FAA documents reviewed by The New York Times. At $183,000, FAA boss Michael Whitaker earns significantly less.
The agency has tried various strategies to fill N90 vacancies over the years, including offering raises and bonuses and using new recruiting tactics. (A hiring measure aimed at candidates without relevant experience—dubbed “hiring from the street” by some N90 controllers—was attempted, controllers say, without much success.)
The leaching rate remained stubbornly high. According to FAA statistics from March, only 32 percent of N90 trainees achieved certification as fully qualified, a far lower rate than at comparable facilities. Last year’s Department of Transportation report showed that N90 had the fewest supervisory staff of any Terminal Radar Approach Control, or Tracon, building in the country, with only eight of 30 approved spots on site.
The FAA has been working to relocate some of N90’s air traffic controllers to Philadelphia since at least 2020, but has been blocked by both the air traffic controllers’ union and New York lawmakers.
Recent efforts to negotiate a move with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association began late last year. According to documents reviewed by The Times, the two sides agreed to a package in March that included an initial 15 percent incentive bonus and a $75,000 payout for those who moved to Philadelphia permanently. But because there weren’t enough volunteers to make the Philadelphia transfer work, the FAA took a tougher stance about six weeks later, according to an April 29 memorandum reviewed by The Times: They told more than a dozen N90 air traffic controllers that they would be involuntarily reassigned.
At the union’s urging, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, whose district includes N90, wrote the May 7 letter calling on the FAA to withdraw its reassignments. In addition to Mr. Schumer, it was signed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and four other members of Congress from the region in and around Long Island. Three of them were Republicans, including Mr. D’Esposito.
“There are people who actually have strong, solid jobs, and they’re not moving because they want to — they’re moving because we tell them to,” Mr. D’Esposito said in an interview. “It’s not a good situation.”
Some controllers that do not transition may be reassigned to new roles on N90. However, to get a new position, one must demonstrate to the FAA that a move would cause undue hardship and would require a year or more of training for a new position.
The FAA, which spent $36 million renovating and modernizing the Philadelphia Tracon building, recently made another attempt to make the move attractive. In the April 29 memo ordering the 17 staff moves, the agency increased its incentive bonuses to $100,000 for controllers who relocated to Philadelphia temporarily or permanently.
But Mr. Segretto, the union group’s president, and many of his members are unwavering.
“We are completely against it,” he said. “It forces air traffic controllers to choose between their careers and leaving their families or resigning from their jobs.”
Mark Walker contributed reporting from Washington.
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2024-05-14 22:41:55
www.nytimes.com
