|
I have good news and I have bad news. The good news is; for all of you, who throughout your careers had wished the Agency could find a way to move quickly on change, is that the Agency is moving at a relative speed of warp 8 on multiple directives. The bad news; most of these directives are potentially harmful to you, your career longevity, the National Airspace System and ultimately our standing as the safest and most efficient ATC system in the world.
This is not your fathers FAA. As frustrating as the past has been with boondoggle cost overrun systems that didn’t work either as advertised or as needed, coupled with bureaucratic largess within the middle ranks causing good (and bad) projects to collapse under their own weight … things have changed. While you were plugging along at your job the past three or four years the pendulum has swung 180 degrees out.
It used to be that, for the most part, decisions were made with at least a glance towards system integrity, safety and/or future expansion. Now it appears that only one thing matters … money … how much can be cut short term from the budget. HR and budget people are now the driving forces at the puzzle palace. Even those yahoos in air traffic in DC, the ones who traded in their headset for a brown nose, at least had a distant comprehension of what was necessary for ATC. Well they aren’t even particularly in the decision pipeline anymore. The ATO, while having some exciting marching orders and some long needed reforms in mind, is basically a neutered operation … unable to act with authority outside the shackles of the Administrator and the monetary litmus test. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for saving money when we can do so without a degradation of the system. But when short term cost savings are the only real decision making paradigm it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Current operational support and future plans have been essentially imprisoned by a bunch of bean counters with no real knowledge base to know if what they are doing is fiscal responsibility or fissure creation.
The list of hits from slashing of modernization funding to ignoring hiring needs to trust fund pillaging to whacky privatization schemes all seem to share the same ignorance or head in the sand profile. I thought I might concentrate on just one of these areas in each of the next few updates.
This week’s winner is outsourcing. I know it can be hard to get worked up over somebody else’s workplace being sold off to the lowest bidder … heck here I sit in an enroute center or major terminal so that stuff won’t be coming my way right? Think again Skippy. Last week I reported that the GAO [Government Accountability Office] let lose an interesting factoid in congressional testimony; of the total traffic of the world’s six largest ATC systems the US works 92% of the traffic. WOW! Combine that with other studies that show us to be the most efficient (both productivity and cost-wise) in the world and also the safest and the only conclusion you could come to is the best thing to do with our system is to sell it off. Say what? But in virtually the same breath, that same GAO that reported the 92% figure, making any comparisons with other ATC systems a purely apples and oranges affair, also launched this little tidbit as reported by ‘Inside FAA’;
The GAO said that one of the options the FAA has is to extend outsourcing to other functions, such as en-route operations, oceanic ATC, or night operations. A panel of experts providing information on different options for the GAO said that as long as continued government oversight is maintained, "staged outsourcing of the NAS [National Airspace System]'s functions might build confidence in the private sector's ability to provide air-traffic services safely and efficiently," said Dillingham's testimony. "We view the agency's decision to study the contracting out-of-flight services as a significant step towards cost reduction and one that could be selectively expanded to other services if the current experience proves positive."
Hey that makes great sense to me! And the folks ate it up. So I’m sorry to report that there appears to be no safe hidey-holes within ATC from the outsource/privatization crowd. Reality and the facts be damned. How much are you giving to the NATCA PAC? It may be the only hope for keeping the job that you have in a form you’d recognize.
|
