On the FAA's "read-out" -
I'm relieved to see that I'm not alone in thinking, 'aren't some of these steps ones that FAA presumably has already been taking adequate care of all along?' (or thought process to same effect).
CNN aired a 1-hour program Thursday evening on the recent spate of issues and concerns. One "explanation" heard at least once if not more times is that various workforce segments of the overall aviation sector became "rusty" over the course of the pandemic and now with resumed levels of operations and activities. But wait. European aviation sector last summer was intensely active, and encountered problems and concerns - so much so that no less than EUROCONTROL convened a 1-day program in early October to address anticipating Summer 2023 and (proverbially) "planning ahead" so as to avoid any repeats of difficulties of last summer. This SLF/attorney attended. And I don't recall any discussion of a raft, a "spate", of incursion incidents. I don't recall news items last summer from Brussels Zaventem or Frankfurt or CDG or anywhere EUROCONTROL's members' flags fly about incursions. Maybe they occurred in an expected, that is to say, typical summer-season cadence and number but didn't generate news items...(?)
But the larger point is, we're now talking about end of 2022 and almost a full first quarter of this year. And the go-to explanation is workforce segments are shakin' off the rust - still?? Something's not adding up.
FAA and NTSB worthies want not only talk, they want action. (NTSB Chair Homendy emphasized this on CNN Thursday evening). Okay, so... let the action start with drilling into this Austin incident. How and why did the controller mishandle the situation? The follow-ups must start - in earnest - someplace, do they not? And admittedly, I'm not neutral, having focused on employment and labor law for a good many years. The airlines and their workforce segments have the RLA, but the air traffic control segment(s) have nothing quite the same, do they? Whereas when you want to start a fistfight amongst United pilots, current and retired, walk into a gathering and say, "you know, Richard Ferris was right" - but for an equivalent bad-guy heavy, Reagan fired the PATCO strikers and the ATC workforce segment(s) still do not have legislated collective bargaining - or did I miss this somehow? I'm only suggesting that if it's "rust" you're after, look for it at the system (or systemic) level, not at the level of individual members of the workforce. [Hey Hey, My My......]
For some later scene, rails and airways, cats and dogs living together? I'd volunteer to work on a new, all-stakeholders process to devise an Airline Labor Act, lifted out from the RLA, sufficient to undergird the sector for some length of a technologically well-informed future. I'm not holding any breaths.