"Feds to investigate air traffic controllers at LAX"

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Feds to investigate air traffic controllers at LAX
The Associated Press


LOS ANGELES - Federal officials plan to investigate the number and
experience level of air traffic controllers working at Los Angeles
International Airport and the effect of both on flight safety. 

The move announced Friday comes at the request of California Senator Dianne
Feinstein, who has said the country's air control towers could be
short-handed. 

"We must do all that we can to ensure that the skies over California are
safe," Feinstein said. "Unfortunately, we are losing large numbers of air
traffic controllers to retirement, and I'm very concerned that the Federal
Aviation Administration is falling behind on filling these vacancies with
properly trained and certified replacements." 

The Inspector General's Office of the U.S. Department of Transportation will
examine traffic controllers at LAX and at the Terminal Radar Approach
Control centers or "TRACONS" in San Diego and Sacramento, which direct
traffic between airports. 

FAA officials have acknowledged that control towers have suffered from a
recent surge in retirements by able and experienced workers. 

"We've known that we will lose most of our experienced air traffic
controllers in the decades ahead, and we've been preparing for it," said FAA
spokesman Ian Gregor. 

The agency projects that more than half of its roughly 14,800 air traffic
controllers are expected to retire by 2017. 

Gregor said more than 1,800 controllers were hired last year, and plans were
to bring on the same number again this year. 
The FAA recently began offering bonuses of as much as $25,000 to
retirement-eligible controllers willing to keep working. 

The agency's guidelines call for LAX to have between 39 to 47 controllers on
its staff. The airport currently has 43, though four are trainees with no
previous FAA experience. 

Trainees do count toward the authorized total under FAA rules, a fact that
concerned Feinstein's office and would be a subject of the investigation. 

Officials with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association welcomed the
audit. 

"This is extremely important," said Mike Foote, local representative of the
association and a controller at LAX. "We feel that the FAA has been playing
fast and loose with the facts. If we aren't understaffed at LAX, why do we
have three to five people working overtime every day? Even then, we still
run short."

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