US airline and labour groups are urging lawmakers to accelerate a restructuring of the nation’s air traffic control (ATC) organisation, seeking to influence fast-moving changes now sweeping US government agencies.
Leaders made their case during a 4 March aviation subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill, with one lawmaker expressing support for lifting a requirement that controllers retire at age 56.
“What we need to accomplish boils down to getting an emergency funding proposal signed into law” that will pay for hiring more controllers, expanding an Oklahoma City air traffic controller training site and ensuring the FAA “can procure modern technology”, trade group Airlines for America (A4A) chief executive Nicholas Calio tells lawmakers.
The hearing, held by an aviation subcommittee of the US House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, comes amid uncertain times in Washington.
US Department of Transportation secretary Sean Duffy recently disclosed initiating an effort to accelerate controller hiring. But that news came shortly after the US government fired about 130 employees who support ATC. The cuts, which did not impact any actual controllers, was part of a broader effort by the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency to improve US government efficiency.
The staff cuts have been criticised by Democratic lawmakers and by union Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, which represented the 130 affected employees.
On 4 March, that union’s president Dave Spero told lawmakers that the Trump administration’s actions have had a “demoralising effect on the workforce”.
Run by the Federal Aviation Administration, the USA’s ATC system has been systemically short on workers in recent years.
“We are 3,600 certified professional controllers short today,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), tells lawmakers. But because new controllers require two to three years of training, the deficit will not be alleviated anytime soon, he adds.
Unions and industry groups view the FAA’s funding structure as a large part of its ATC problem.
The government funds ATC largely via time-specific spending laws passed by the US Congress, leaving the FAA with little long-term funding certainty and funding shortfalls in the case of government shutdowns.
In a February letter to lawmakers, two-dozen industry groups appealed for changes that would ensure ATC has stable long-term funding.
“We have a historic opportunity… We have to take an urgency to it,” A4A’s Calio said on 4 March. He calls for “a long-term fix to the budgeting process that will allow the FAA to plan long-term capital projects”.
Also during the hearing, aviation subcommittee chair Troy Nehls railed against a US law that requires controllers to retire at age 56.
But changes to that requirement face opposition.
“We do believe that… age 56 is the standard of where we should be. Moving or adjusting that [requirement]… does not solve the immediate staffing crisis,” NATCA’s president Daniels tells Nehls.
