How many trainees do you have, and how are they doing?
Posted by Paul Cox on September 14th, 2009
You’d think that a simple question, like “how many trainees does the FAA have, and how are they doing?”, would be easy for the agency to answer.
You’d think that, because you haven’t been paying attention. This is an agency that has lots of trouble getting even the most basic stuff right.
A few years back, the FAA launched into a massive hiring program. They knew they were going to have to hire thousands of people to come and train to be air traffic controllers. Now, in today’s modern era, it should be easy to keep track of how many trainees are in the FAA overall, how many are in each facility, what phase of training they’re in, how many are washing out, how many are certifying… right?
I mean, it’s just a matter of getting someone to set up a computer database that tracks the information. You establish each category that someone can be in (new hire in OKC, initial facility training, etc) and then you tell each facility that they’re responsible to be sure that their information is up-to-date as of, I dunno, once a month or so.
It should be that simple, right?
It’s not:
On June 8, 2009, we issued our report on training failures among newly hired air traffic controllers… As requested, our audit objectives were to determine (1) the training failure rate among newly hired air traffic controllers and (2) the common causes and factors that are contributing to this rate…
Specifically, we found that FAA’s reported rate of training failures is not accurate because (1) FAA does not track training failures among the new controllers as a separate metric; (2) FAA’s current rate is based on FY 2007 training failures and will likely increase as FAA hires more new controllers between FY 2009 and FY 2017; (3) FAA does not have a uniform definition of training failures and other types of attrition; and (4) FAA’s training failure data in the National Training Database were incomplete, inaccurate, or understated.
The Department of Transportation Inspector General issued a report back in June. The excerpt above is from the web page leading to that report. It’s worth having a look at it, because it’s pretty amazing that something as simple as “how many trainees do you have?” is too tough a question for the FAA to answer.
The IG said, basically, “the FAA’s data sucks.” Here’s the reasons why:
First, FAA’s reported rate includes training failures of newly hired air traffic controllers and transferring veteran controllers who are training on the airspace of their new facility. FAA does not track training failures among newly hired controllers as a separate metric.
This is astounding to me. We need, as an agency, to keep track of how many people we have been hiring and how they’re doing in training. We need to do this for any number of reasons.
For example, we need to know if the CTI program is worth it. The FAA moved to this new form of training (after decades of the previous system) based on a lot of premises, but mostly based on the notion that it would save the agency time and money. Is it working? Are we keeping track of CTI students as a group? No, we’re not even keeping track of new-hire trainees as a group, let alone breaking them into subgroups!
Another example is we need to pay attention to how many people are washing out of training so we know how many more to hire… wait, my bad, that assumes that we want to try and stay ahead of the staffing shortage situation. The FAA has made it pretty clear over the past several years that they don’t give a rip about that; they just hire a replacement after someone leaves.
Of course, that leaves a one to three year gap (sometimes even more!) where you used to have a controller, and now you’ve got a trainee (who may or may not make it through), but that’s not really seen as a problem by the FAA.
What other problems did the IG run into in their audit? The FAA’s rate of training failures was based on 2007 data only. In 2007, we hadn’t been really cooking in the training program yet; the vast majority of the trainees that the FAA has hired in the past few years had only just begun the program at that point.
In other words, a bunch more people probably washed out of the program as they progressed into the more difficult parts of training (usually radar training). Sadly, thanks to the FAA’s crummy data, nobody can tell. As the IG said:
From FY 2005 to FY 2006, FAA hired 1,635 new controllers. In contrast, from FY 2007 to FY 2008, FAA hired 4,011 new controllers. Since it takes new controllers 2 to 3 years to certify, most controllers had not been in training long enough in FY 2007 to accurately assess a realistic rate of training failures. As FAA hires more new controllers, the number and rate of training failures will likely increase.
Anecdotal evidence from many FAA facilities (via the more reliable method of data transfer- the union) indicates that this has indeed happened. The washout rate at many facilities is skyrocketing now that trainees are getting deeper into the process.
The next reason that the IG couldn’t figure things out doesn’t surprise me a bit, although it’s pretty amazing:
Third, FAA does not have a uniform definition of training failures and other types of attrition. Consequently, it is largely left to managers to determine how to classify controller attrition, which is not done consistently. For example, Headquarters managers told us that transfers to lower-level facilities are not counted as training failures. However, several facility managers told us they classify all candidates who fail to make satisfactory training progress as training failures, regardless of whether they transfer or are terminated from FAA. Developing a clear and consistent definition is important since we also found that many new controllers left training for reasons other than failing (e.g., medical disqualification, compensation issues, and misconduct).
In other words, HQ thinks that “training failure” means one thing, Facilty XXX thinks it means something else, and Facility YYY and ZZZ have different definitions as well.
But hey, those managers sure were all able to ensure that everyone met the same dress code!
This is a pretty neat summation of what’s wrong with the FAA. The agency’s management, guys like Bruce Johnson, were so concerned with forcing people to wear “business casual” that they held huge joint training sessions for EVERY single FAA supervisor, area manager, operations manager, and facility manager in St Louis. They defined exactly what they expected “business casual” meant and laid it out for all those managers.
Yet they can’t get everyone on the same page about what exactly constitutes a training failure, and as a result they don’t know how many training failures they’ve had.
We might have a new contract coming out soon, but we’ve still got these same people running the FAA. What do you suppose the odds are of things improving or changing significantly?
September 14th, 2009 at 7:22 am
The IG report was deja vu all over again. When I came to the agency in the late 1980s, there was an ongoing debate between the FAA, the IG, and GAO about how many trainees were in the system and their failure rate. Seems like we never learn.
September 14th, 2009 at 7:42 am
HQ comes up with these ideas. CTI, train-to-succeed, etc., etc.
HQ knows that if it begins some kind of quality audit, the results will be made public, for all to see. The Administrator might take ten minutes of heat from some congressional panel sometime in the next year or two, but those ten minutes translate into loss of promotion opportunity for the underlings who sold CTI or whatever else as the Salvation of This Agency.
If we were doing that well in training, you’d already know. A study would be ordered to confirm it, and it would be a victory lap for the people at HQ who weren’t picked up as Assistant Deputy Administrator for Basket Weaving yet.
We won’t look really closely and rigorously at training until the people who brought us here are gone. The money will already be paid on ERAM before we sh*t all over Lockheed Martin in public. This is the Federal Aviation Administration.
September 14th, 2009 at 8:02 am
That information is there, the FAA just doesn’t want to know the truth, that would be embarrassing for the higher skill set still running the circus. I remember one of the first things I learned coming into the FAA was that the Peter Principle was pervasive and institutionalized to a fine art among management. Boy, I sure don’t miss all that B.S. Good luck to all of you still having to deal with all those weak-sticks that moved up and now are in charge! Sadly, some things will never change.
September 14th, 2009 at 9:54 am
In our facility we “recycle” trainees in new areas, reinstate them so they can get transfers even though they are not really in training nor would have a chance in he** of checking out. Playing with the numbers and rebaselining (I would be happy to never hear that word again) has carried over from the Blakey/Bush era and does a good job of covering up the FAA’s failures.
Many of the ones we are checking out (Not all of course) are SCARED to death. Of course we all started somewhere, but I had plenty of time to learn my maps and letters and plenty of time to get good at my D-sides and not rushed through a very difficult training process. Many of the newer people had plenty of time to learn their maps and letters but chose not to, then they where rushed through training and checked out without knowledge needed to work efficiently or safely. Now I see them come off a sector with 25% less traffic than 2 years ago visibly shaken. Good news is we have a bid for 2 Supe positions open. Its a recipe for the OMs we have now, checked out in ’81, sucked as a controller moved up immediately to Supe to save lives. Then stay WAY too long because they are not doing anything except picking up a check and causing the REAL working people grief and making idiotic calls on issues they have no clue about.
September 14th, 2009 at 10:25 am
The agency has failed miserably to put the “right people in the right places” and will do whatever it can to ensure to make it appear that they did the right thing and not allow trainees to fail. The agency hired people right off the street and put them into facilities that they had no business being there in the first place. As an example a trainee off the street at SFO was to be given 200 hrs to certify on ground control. The trainee has now worked over 400 hrs and is still not certified. Its apparent that the agency will not do the right thing and wash this individual out at the expense of admitting that perhaps they screwed up by placing people where they did not belong…..
September 14th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
At my facility, I am the last one to certify in the past year. It only took 3 months and 3 weeks. We have a trainee that stared a few weeks before I, “trying” to finish up local. We just have one out indefinitely, one retiring, and one that transferred over from another tower they did not certify. What does that tell me? Well it tells me, that the training programs are not good. I came in from the academy (CTI only five years later and a stint at an airline) and did just fine, because I CARED TO DO THE JOB AND MAKE MYSELF MONEY! The “screen at the academy is weak at best”, it is an absolute joke. The training in the field isn’t better. My fellow union brothers and sisters, and I are busting our humps to train, and when nothing happens weak management does not step in and rectify situations. We have 8 CPCs/CICs, and 4 developmentals. No one can leave and we have no end in sight. There is no real leadership in the FAA to guide/lead.
September 14th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
We just have one out indefinitely, one retiring, and one that transferred over from another tower they did not certify. What does that tell me?
It tells me you work at a low level tower.
September 15th, 2009 at 8:13 am
I love these not so comfortable moments for the FAA. It seems we always hear from “FAAguy” when he has a smirky ‘in your face’ responce. I would bet my retirement check for the month that “FAAguy” will remain silent on this one. If it makes upper management look good, you can bet there are metrics to prove it, if the stats show the FAA is clueless and loosing face, there will be NO metrics on the matter. We have seen this ploy many times since Bush put a public relations firm in charge of the flying publics safety.
September 15th, 2009 at 11:28 am
“Its a recipe for the OMs we have now, checked out in ‘81, sucked as a controller moved up immediately to Supe to save lives. Then stay WAY too long because they are not doing anything except picking up a check and causing the REAL working people grief and making idiotic calls on issues they have no clue about.”
Yep.
OMs and other MSS3s at my facility who’s jobs were created out of thin air the last three years, and funded by the money they’ve been ripping off from controllers.. Yuk it up all day, swill coffee, conduct a circle jerk at 7 and 3 30 every day.
We’ve lost 7 new hires in my area to washout and 1 CPCit, the last two years, and have two more street hire/CTIs about to flush.
AS@SCT
September 15th, 2009 at 12:38 pm
It’s time to bring back the screen.At my facility we have a 65%-70% failure rate. The fully certified CPC’s are out numbered by the trainees by a ratio of 3/1. It’s just not working FAA!!!!!!!!! Will you ever learn how to place individuals based on experience?
Angry Fokker
Eligible but not gone yet!
September 15th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
rangemark,
unfortunately I do, I want to move to a level 10 in my area, but we are at mim staffing levels so I can not leave. I hope to get there within the next year, it would be nice to control at the airport I was based at when I flew in the airlines.
September 16th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Bring back the(or a) screen. OKC is a joke, no one fails. Bring back some sort of a screen so the field can pick the fruit and not spend all day weeding!
September 16th, 2009 at 8:12 am
Failure Rate? Huh?
My ATM is on the nat’l hiring team. She says anybody can do our job, and has hired individuals who could never pass any type of screening process. Negative training reports are dealt with harshly. We are afraid, for our jobs, to write honest and accurate training reports. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, EVEN FOR AN IMBECILE, TO FAIL AT OUR FACILITY.
September 16th, 2009 at 9:49 am
Is anyone writing this stuff to “Your Two Cents?” It’d be nice to see some posts about it up there so that we can see what responses come back. I don’t expect anything constructive to come of it besides ‘getting the word out’ but it will be entertaining, at least.
September 16th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
You want entertaining? Here at our little midwestern facility in our area, we sometimes play what’s called “The True/False Game”. Here’s an example…”True or false – There were at least three trainees on the verge of washing out, unable to certify in their respective areas, and they were promoted to supervisor.” Um I’m gona say true. Here’s another…”True or false – A PATCO rehire unable to certify in THREE areas once used the following phraseology “UPS Echo Tango 61 point out approved” for an UPSET61 flight. That trainee is now in QA reviewing our phraseology! People who can’t do the job promoted to supervise and critique those who can do the job. It doesn’t make sense.
September 19th, 2009 at 6:57 am
“It seems we always hear from “FAAguy” when he has a smirky ‘in your face’ responce. I would bet my retirement check for the month that “FAAguy” will remain silent on this one.”
I’ve read the IG report and I think it gives the agency some good information on where our data collection and training implementation comes up short. I have dealt with IG teams over the years and have always found them to be cordial and professional. As a taxpayer, I am glad that they are out there helping to make all agencies operate better.
December 11th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Looking for some advise…….
I was recently a student at the academy and was washed out with a large number of students even though my work was always at the top of the class and I performed on my performance verification to the standards required. Below is a little bit of my story. Looking for any advise anyone can provide.
I began the application process in the spring of 2008. One part of the application process required undergoing an air traffic control aptitude test on which I scored better than 90%. I began my ATC training at the FAA training academy in Oklahoma City in August 09 and studied there through December.
My training at the academy consisted of three sections – basic training, enroute non-radar training and enroute radar training. Basic training lasted roughly four weeks and I received high grades on all my block tests and final – averaging well over 90%.
Upon graduation from basics I progressed to the non-radar portion of my training. During the academic portion of non-radar training I earned all high A’s and scored a 99% on my map test which consisted of recreating an airspace map from memory containing over 300 data points. Upon finishing the academic portion of non-radar training the class began the lab portion of non-radar training. I very quickly progressed from needing instructor assistance to determine aircraft restrictions to being able to run problems by myself and understanding and issuing the necessary restrictions and clearances. I learned to perform these very challenging tasks in a period of two short weeks.
Upon completion of the non-radar portion of my training the class progressed to the academic portion of radar training. As with non-radar training, I once again earned high A’s in all my testing during the two weeks of radar academic training. At this point the class began running “problems” in the radar lab. The first week of radar problems consisted of “part-task problems” where each individual problem was designed to teach us a particular radar task or skill. Once we completed the part-task problems the class moved on to actual radar scenarios where the individual “part-task” skills we learned were combined into real-life scenarios. There were a total of thirty-six radar scenarios that each student was required to complete. Each of these scenarios became progressively more difficult to test the student’s ability. I made steady progress through each of these scenarios and one of my lead instructors commented that I was one of the steadiest performers in the class. This same instructor also indicated that I had excellent phraseology and that I was going to excel in the field.
Upon completion of the thirty-six training scenarios students are required to undergo a performance verification (PV) conducted to measure the student’s competence and whether the student is sufficiently equipped to move onto the next phase of training at their assigned enroute center facility. All the radar instructors that I worked with during my last week in the radar lab indicated that I was ready for my PV and that I would do well. During my first PV I solved all the aircraft-to-aircraft conflictions that came up in the problem and I easily handled the other tasks I was required to perform. My evaluator indicated he failed me because I had to be prompted by the radar side (r-side) to make one point-out and to make the manual handoffs to Houston Center (to be prompted means the r-side offsets the strip, alerting me non-verbally to figure out what needs to be done to take care of it). I had to be prompted to make this handoff because I looked for the letters on the bottom right hand corner of the strips indicating which center the aircraft was flying into. There were no letters on the strips in my strip bay indicating to me that no handoffs were needed. It turns out that not all Jackson departure strips have letters indicating which center the aircraft is going to. They are only printed on the second strip once the aircraft departs, but that strip is not placed into the strip bay and used. I had never been taught that Jackson departures are unique in this regard and do not have this information on the strip. Once the PV was completed and I learned this information I realized why I had made this mistake. During the de-briefing my evaluator indicated that my traffic search and my board management were excellent but he failed me because I was promoted on the handoffs.
If you fail a PV the academy requires you to run three remedial problems to fix what the evaluator indicated you needed work on. After you run these three remedial problems you are allowed to re-take the PV a second time. When I approached my instructors to run the required remedial problems the instructors indicated they had never seen a student fail for such a minor item, especially when other students were being passed after making multiple mistakes of much greater magnitude. My lead instructor indicated he had never seen a failing PV evaluation form with so few errors listed.
I ran my PV retake the following day and the evaluator failed me again, this time for releasing a departing aircraft to an altitude at which another distant aircraft (that was almost ready to be handed off to the next sector) was at. The evaluator’s reasoning was that the departing aircraft was a higher performer and would therefore overtake the slower moving aircraft that was at the same altitude. Calculating aircraft performance into the decision-making process was never taught in any of the practice scenarios we ran and thus would not have been a mistake that I could have corrected because I had no knowledge of working with aircraft speeds when releasing a departing aircraft. A second mistake that the evaluators failed me for was moving an aircraft to an altitude that created a conflict later on in the scenario. I did indeed move that aircraft to an altitude that created a potential separation conflict but was never given the opportunity to show that I could correct that error as the evaluators stopped the scenario before I was given the opportunity to recognize the conflict and correct it. I feel this was very unfair, particularly since other students in my class had multiple conflict alerts and loss of separation during their PVs and yet still passed. My evaluators said they had a hard time making the pass or fail decision because they said I have a good demeanor for the job and I had very good phraseology and board management. Given this fact it was unfair to fail me since other students in my class experienced an actual loss of separation during their PV scenario and yet still passed.
Out of the two enroute classes at the academy that took their PV’s December 1st and 2nd the academy failed nine students on the first PV and completely washed out seven students. According to the instructors of both classes they had never seen such a large number of students washed out at one time. There was also a tower class that had their PV’s on December 2nd that had an exceptionally large number of students washed out as well.
In addition to my excellent academic and practical performance at the academy I also exhibited uncompromising behavior. I never missed class. I was never late for class. I was always prepared for class. I always observed all rules regarding classroom etiquette and I always treated my instructor and fellow students with respect. My personnel file and my academic records should clearly confirm all the information contained in this document.
I met every standard that was required of me to qualify to move on to the next phase of training(including performing to passing standards on both PVs) and yet I was washed out of the program. Does anyone know what is going on in the FAA? Are they trying to cut back on trainees? Any insight at all?
December 11th, 2009 at 10:41 am
I can’t comment on what’s going on at the faa. It boils down to failing the PV. Not all evaluators are the same. Your perfect attendance and excellent phraseology don’t count for anything if you fail the PV. Fair or not, and I can’t really judge, that’s what it boils down to. There are lot’s of A holes who do PVs. Maybe you got one or maybe you weren’t good enough. Sorry.
December 11th, 2009 at 12:19 pm
My guess is they are finally doing their job and not sending a bunch of crap to the facilities. You sound like a nice enough guy but what we have recieved from the academy this last year is appauling. They may have finally gotten word from above “o.k. enough is enough, your going to kill someone if you keep this up!” About time!
December 12th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Unfortunately the ones that are being sent on to the centers (at least from my class) are “the bunch of crap” you are referring to. I didn’t fail the PV – my performance was well above passing standards both times, and others who passed their PV performed MUCH worse that I did. All the trainers and even other center supervisors who saw or are familiar with my PVs will confirm this. The training manager at the center I was supposed to go to freaked out when he saw that my name had been eliminated while others who struggled through the whole training were passed on. If you think think this is progress you’re fooling yourself. They may be washing people out, but you’re still “going to kill someone if you keep this up” because the people they are passing are incompetent. I’m a pilot and have flown in “the system” so I have a pretty good idea of how things work from a user standpoint. My opinion of the agency is pretty low right now – except I still respect the professionalism of most controllers I talk to.
December 12th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Frustrated,
You don’t have to convice me, if your as good as you say you are, your welcome to my facility anytime. I’m sorry the system has screwed you over. It sounds like you may have pissed someone off??? FAA and progress??? Probably not in my lifetime, but I only have 3 years to go, so I’ll just hang in there and do my time. I feel for ya though and hope somehow your able to get this fixed.
Take care and good luck.