ORLANDO SENTINEL: Air-traffic controllers fear impasse; As the fight over a new contract drags on, controllers say the workload is rising.
By Beth Kassab
Orlando air-traffic controllers are worried that a contract impasse between their national union and the federal government could lead to a drastically understaffed radar center and control towers at a time when local air traffic is booming.
Such a scenario would mean more overtime -- and more fatigue -- among the men and women tasked with ensuring 2,000 safe takeoffs and landings at Central Florida airports each day, the Orlando controllers say.
Last week, after nine months of negotiations, the Federal Aviation Administration announced contract talks broke down with the union representing 15,000 air-traffic controllers. At the center of the dispute are proposed pay cuts for new hires and changes in retirement benefits.
While both sides have said a strike is unlikely, some fear the impasse could result in serious safety compromises.
The proposed contract by the FAA cuts pay for new hires and affects certain retirement benefits, essentially acting as an incentive for those who are eligible to retire soon under the current contract.
Orlando has 68 of 74 air-traffic controller jobs filled with 15 people eligible to retire. An additional 11 people will become eligible to retire in the next year.
"If these people go, we'll be in dire straits," said Patrick Sugrue, a union member and controller who has worked in Orlando since 1991.
Because of the certification and training required to work in a high-volume city such as Orlando, new hires can't get into the jobs fast enough, he said.
The FAA acknowledges that it faces a large number of retirements over the next few years as many of its workers become eligible at the same time because they were hired after President Reagan fired more than 11,000 striking air-traffic controllers in 1981.
But FAA spokesman Geoffrey Basye said the FAA is not cutting current controllers' wages. Instead, he said, the agency is trying to make the wages of future controllers more in line with what other agency professionals make. The average controller earns $166,000 a year.
"It takes a lot of people to get a plane on and off the ground safely," Basye said.
He has called the union's request for more money "unnerving a bit."
More people will be hired to replace those who are retiring, Basye said, dismissing the union's concerns about safety.
"If they're so concerned about safety, why are they asking for an automatic two-week vacation in the summer -- our heaviest travel season?" he asked.
Just Friday, the Orlando area experienced a record volume day, Sugrue said, with 2,520 takeoffs, landings and planes passing through Orlando air space in a 16-hour period.
The radar system based at Orlando International Airport controls air traffic for a number of surrounding airports and will extend to Cape Canaveral in July.
Increased volume has already stressed the Orlando tower and radar center in some ways, records show, with seven operational errors in Orlando since Oct. 1. There were just three such errors in all of fiscal 2005, records show.
One of those errors in February sent a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 and an AirTran Airways Boeing 717 on a near-collision course at Orlando International Airport, the state's busiest in terms of passenger volume.
Pilots in both planes took corrective action to avert a collision in the sky. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association says its proposal would have included a flat payroll for five years that it says would have saved $1.4 billion, a claim the FAA disputes.
Now the contract is in the hands of Congress, which has 60 days to review the FAA's proposal and the union's objections. If Congress does not act within 60 days, the FAA has said it will be able to impose its contract proposal.