It’s a New, New, New World

For those that haven’t heard, the NATCA membership ratified the contract. We now have a new president (Rinaldi), a new contract and a new FAA Administrator. All of that matters, of course. It matters a lot. But the important relationship is at the bottom of the organizational chart.

That relationship is going to take some time. Think about it. There were a lot of controllers hired over the last 1,116 days. (That’s over 3 years for the numerically challenged folks like me.) There were also a lot of controllers promoted to supervisor during that period. They’ve never had a contract to work with. There will be some older controllers racing to be the first to file a grievance. And after 3 years, there will be some grievances.

Rinaldi and Babbitt will have their hands full just trying to win the peace.

The citizens became a little safer today. Not much, but a little. At least this distraction is behind us. Don’t forget -- there are a lot of rookie controllers out there and the FAA is trying to rush them through training. That, to me, is frighteningly familiar. Actually, I think today’s conditions might be worse. It’d take a month to flesh out that statement that but here are two points:

1) The FAA wasn’t at war with its workforce in 1982. Actually, they couldn’t do enough for you. They’d “won” the war and they needed bodies.

2) The training controllers are receiving is far inferior. And as the saying goes, many of these young controllers don’t know what they don’t know. But they’ll learn. The job -- the fundamentals -- of air traffic control haven’t changed. No matter how hard the FAA wishes they could replace controllers with technology.

Don Brown
September 24, 2009