[Mifnet 🛰 76226] Re: Me thinks I see A4A fingerprints on this

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An ATC ‘training bubble’ (training new controllers to certified positions) may explain some of the drop in productivity. For example, at the NY TRACON, training to position, to alleviate the more than 20% shortage of certified controllers, is taking two or more years, most of which, other than in peak periods, takes certified controllers off the line, to train newly graduated from FAA Oklahoma City controllers, neither of whom are talking to pilots. - Bob Mann On May 19, 2026, at 07:12, Kathryn Creedy via Mifnet <mifnet@lists.mifnet.com> wrote:  But I agree as long as it is not in charge. The comments are interesting. Cheers -- kathryn The FAA can’t continue to regulate itself The agency could regulate air traffic control without providing it. May 19, 2026 at 5:45 a.m. EDTToday at 5:45 a.m. EDT 4 min The Federal Aviation Administration’s latest plan to get the air traffic control workforce on better footing makes some important advances. But it doesn’t address the ultimate source of America’s ATC dysfunction: a bureaucratic agency that regulates itself. The FAA’s 2026 to 2028 workforce plan includes a list of actions to resolve a long-running shortage of controllers. It has already taken the most basic economic response to a worker shortage — higher pay — by raising starting salaries almost 30 percent. On the other end of a controller’s career, the FAA has also created incentives for delaying retirement. The mandatory retirement age of 56, imposed for safety reasons, has not changed. But many controllers are eligible to retire with full pensions at age 50. New bonuses encourage them to stay longer. While the number of passengers is higher than ever, the number of aircraft movements that controllers manage actually peaked in 2000. Post-9/11 consolidation and efficiency improvements in the airline industry have resulted in less total work for air traffic control, even as some hubs have become more congested. Aircraft movements are currently 16 percent below 2000 levels, while ATC staffing is 3 percent below. That means productivity has fallen. The FAA says the average number of hours its controllers spend actually controlling air traffic per eight-hour shift has fallen from 4.68 in 2008 to 4.01 in 2025. It makes up the difference by using ever-higher amounts of overtime. Note from KBC: Can that be right? To improve productivity, the FAA plans to adopt automatic scheduling tools, which are already common in most workplaces. “It is difficult to understand why no automation tools have been deployed to schedule our workforce or track time, attendance and functional work accomplished,” the plan says. It is not actually that difficult to understand: The FAA has little incentive to improve its own practices because the watchdog to make sure it’s doing the job effectively is … the FAA. In most other rich countries, the provider of air traffic control is a separate organization from the regulator of air traffic control. That’s in accordance with guidance from the International Civil Aviation Organization, which says that separating those functions “has encouraged a business approach to service delivery and an improved quality of service.” The most common model is a government corporation, funded by user fees rather than general taxes. A few countries, including Canada, have a non-government and nonprofit ATC provider. Either way, the provider is financially self-sufficient and institutionally separate from the bureaucratic agency that regulates it. The proper role for the FAA in air traffic control should be setting safety standards and ensuring they are upheld. The provision of services should be spun off into a separate organization that only does air traffic control. It would be freed from the constraints of the federal budget and procurement rules to improve according to the best practices of business, not the demands of politicians. Other countries using this model have had staffing shortages due to the aftershocks of the covid pandemic’s reduction in travel, but the FAA’s staffing issues predated that. Suffering from a massive disruption in the air travel market is a different problem than a continuous undersupply of controllers who are also becoming less productive. The FAA’s ideas are overdue. They probably would have been implemented a long time ago if the government wasn’t fully in control. Comments: To many of us in the aviation world the FAA has long been derided as the ‘tombstone agency’. Why? Because it too often takes little or no action until a major incident, for example the horrific crash over the Potomac River at Washington’s National Airport. Improvements in procedures, as well as technical and staffing upgrades take decades. The FAA, above all else, is a plodding federal bureaucracy. The changes suggested in this article would be a great improvement, albeit even more begs to happe Remember that whenever you read anything in Wapi now, the first question you should ask is how will this make billionaires more rich. Then with that perspective in mind things become clearer. You’re welcome. I would offer that removing the requirement NTSB aircraft investigation agency merely recommend changes resulting from its investigations and giving them authority to order changes might help. If nothing else, it would force airlines away from the "death cost vs. fix cost" calculation that causes delays in addressing known problems. Since aircraft cannot pull over to the shoulder when a problem occurs, there will always be fatalities - lessons written in blood. But timely correction of demonstrated flaw in construction, operation and maintenance of airplanes can be improved. Ending with another "sneer" at government, this article treats readers to more hackneyed slams at government's tyrannies against businesses and billionaires. I wonder what crying child we are hearing from this time? -- Kathryn Creedy PHONE # 321 405 4395 US-Eastern Time Zone Visit me on LinkedIn  <image007.gif> -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Revised: 20250507 You are receiving The Mifnet because you requested to join this list. The Mifnet is largely a labor of love, however the infrastructure isn't exactly cost-free. 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