FAA's 10 very crude 10 year recruiting advertisement...

[Skylark_air]

Go on the FAA's Website, and it says just under "Controller Workforce Plan - 10 Year Stratagy for the Air Traffic Controller Workforce" the words "Become and Air Traffic Controller"

[URL=http://www.faa.gov/]http://www.faa.gov[/URL

It looks like they might need a bit more than 10 years, noting this rather crude advertisement. It kinda looks like they're desperate to get more ATC Staff when they put job adverts just under an article explaining the 10 year plan...

[Jerricho]

Hmmmm.....

Tampa approach could have my name on it ;)

[Scott Voigt]

Naw, the FAA isn't desperate, they haven't even asked for money to hire more controllers. They KNOW that they are going to be in trouble but that is going to be under someone elses administration, so why worry <sigh>...

NATCA lobbied congress this last year to get some money put into the budget to hire some more controllers, so due to that they are going to hire just a little over 400 controllers this year. Won't keep up with the loss to retirements, but better than last year where we lost over 500 controllers and they only hired about 17. No money they keep saying...

As to folks wanting the job, we have over 2000 on the list trying to get in right now.

regards

Scott

[atcea.com]

Don Brown has written what I believe to be an insightful column in AvWeb.com about the FAA's 10 year hiring plan. A couple quotes:

First, I'm not really sure how this qualifies as a plan. It's a little late. It's over 23 years since the PATCO strike, when a slew of new controllers started working. Controllers can retire after 25 years of working traffic. The math is simple: 1981 + 25 = 2006. In case you forgot to flip the page on your calendar this month, it's already 2005. It sounds like it's in the nick of time until you realize it can take five years to train a controller. That means the FAA should have had a plan in 2001. Either that or we have to wait until 2010 for the plan to take effect.

"Filling the job of a controller who retires today is the culmination of many steps that must by necessity have begun several years in advance. In the past, the process required three to five years. Through improvements in classroom training, increased use of high-technology simulators and more efficient on-the-job training, we expect to compress that process to two to three years." ...I guess the FAA didn't learn much from the strike in 1981. Except that you can shortcut the training program. The question isn't "Can you?" it is "Should you?" Or in this case, "Should you really have to?" They did it in 1981 to meet a crisis. As I pointed out above, today's "crisis" has been foreseeable for 25 years.

The entire article is available at AvWeb (http://www.avweb.com/news/columns/188884-1.html)
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ATC 24/7 (http://atcea.com)

[Scott Voigt]

Yup, Don was spot on as usual...

regards

Scott

[West Coast]

"NATCA lobbied congress this last year"

Congress wasn't the only thing NATCA lobbied last year, saw plenty of their efforts on TV.

[Scott Voigt]

Hi West;

That is true, but that was part of the effort of lobbying congress. You get the help of others in that lobbying <G>... It seemed to work. Now we start the fight all over again.

regards

Scott

[West Coast]

I can't help but believe the agenda was a little larger than simple controller numbers. I would be interested to see a breakdown of how controllers voted. Imagine it would be the same as pilot unions, endorsed one way while the rank and file generally went the other way.