Are you worth seven cents? The FAA doesn’t think so.
Posted by Blue Eyed Buddhist on August 4th, 2008
Well, we’ve seen our visitor counts going up significantly over the past few weeks. Apparently people need their fix of FAA news and rumors, and with some of the other blogs going dark for a while, they’re showing up here.
Hopefully those of you who’re new have also seen a couple of other excellent blogs. Don Brown does a great job with his Get The Flick; there’s also a couple of newer folks blogging at The Potomac Current and Undertow and Jurassic Bark.
Enough pimping (although seriously, anyone interested in the FAA should read each of those blogs- and the Follies, of course- every single day) and on to today’s entry.
A news item in The Birmingham News on Friday, August 1:
President Dick Cheney landed at Birmingham International Airport about 10:30 a.m. today on his way to Shoal Creek Golf and Country Club in northern Shelby County.
The blue and white Boeing 757 taxied to the Air National Guard building on the north side of airport where the vice president will disembark for his short stay.
Doesn’t seem like all that big a deal, right? The Veep zips into town for a quickie stay. What for? Our next story tells us (from the Montgomery Advertiser):
Republican congressional candidate Jay Love of Montgomery was in Shelby County on Friday for a fundraiser featuring Vice President Dick Cheney.
More than 100 people attended the event, which raised more than the goal of $150,000, according to Philip Bryan, spokesman for the Alabama Republican Party.
Bryan said the money will be directed to the party’s Victory 08 push, which will help with get out the vote efforts and hiring field representatives.
Okay, seems pretty standard. The Veep flies into town, has some rubber chicken with the local bigwigs in the party, gets his picture taken with a bunch of people who’re paying WAY too much for the chance to be next to him, and then presumably jets on out.
Now, we know that there’s a lot of work behind the scenes on this. The police and Secret Service no doubt spent tens of thousands on security, but that’s just how it goes; everyone does it and even if you despise Cheney (and you should), he’s the Vice President of the United States of America and needs the security arrangements.
What SHOULD upset you, though, is the story of the air traffic control work behind the scenes. In fact, the story I’m about to tell you should infuriate you.
A few things you should know, if you’re not an air traffic controller or technician. We have a couple of different types of radar systems that we use to guide you home. Terminal radars, or ASR radars, are shorter range but have higher resolution. They’re generally located on airports and help controllers by providing excellent radar coverage right down to the ground at the airport; we can also safely move airplanes closer to each other.
Enroute radars (or ARSR radars) are longer range, so they can see further out (up to 200+ miles instead of 50-70 miles) but they don’t have the same resolution. With ARSRs, we have to keep the airplanes at least 5 miles apart, and with ASRs we can let them get to within 3 miles of each other.
Terminals can use the enroute radars if need be, but it really slows down the operation- and is less safe. The reason is that the ARSRs don’t provide radar coverage down to the ground, so if a terminal is using the ARSR instead of the ASR, the air traffic controllers are effectively blind at or below a certain altitude. This means if there’s traffic or if a plane gets off course, the controllers have no way of noticing- and believe me, it’s important to have that secondary line of defense backing up the safety operation.
Terminal controllers aren’t used to using the enroute radar, so they are working with equipment that operates slower and changes their working methods. Imagine you go to drive your car, and instead of a steering wheel and foot pedals it’s got motorcycle controls for the brakes and throttle. You might be able to control the car and steer it, and even get pretty good at it after a while, but at first you’re not going to be nearly as safe.
What’s more, instead of using 3 miles, they have to use at least 5, and being blind they have to use much more, so the efficiency of the operation goes right into the toilet when the terminal is using enroute radar. (Again, imagine how much more slow and cautious you’d be if your car’s controls were suddenly replaced.)
You’ll hear the FAA’s talking heads spokespeople assure the media that we have all kinds of perfectly safe backups and that the operations aren’t affected at all… and they’re lying each and every time they do it. It’s not as safe and it’s not as efficient.
Almost all ATC radars typically run on “commercial” power, meaning the same power system that your home runs on. When there’s bad weather in the area, though, we switch our radars over to run on backup generators. The reason is simple- the generator is on-site, so we know that we’re not going to risk losing power due to lightning strikes or power lines being knocked down.
Let’s go back to Tuesday night/Wednesday morning of last week, July 29/30. It’s summer in North America, and as usual there are lines of pretty amazing weather systems moving around the nation. One line of severe weather goes over/through the Birmingham area, so in preparation for that the FAA’s technicians put the terminal radar onto backup power.
After the line of storms went over Birmingham, ATC ordered the terminal radar to go back to the normal commercial power. After a while they noticed that the generator was still running. Unfortunately, due in part to the FAA’s short staffing the technician work force (it’s not just controllers that are badly understaffed in the FAA, folks) nobody was in until Wednesday morning to investigate.
The TechOps folks came in on Wednesday morning and discovered that during the storm, there had been a power outage over most of the area. (Good thing they were on the backup generator!) But when the power came back on, the radar never switched back; the automatic switch was out of service and it would not be able to go back to regular power on its own.
Part was ordered but it wouldn’t be available until the following week. In the meanwhile, the Vice President is coming to town before that, on Friday, Aug 1. And here’s where things get ugly, folks.
In the meanwhile, they ordered the radar to be put back onto commercial power. This is possible, but it requires manual intervention because the switch is broken. That means they’re going to have to shut the radar down for a short time while they switch over; while the ASR is shut down they’ll have to use the enroute radar. Degraded quality of safety and efficiency.
In addition, once the terminal radar is back up and running on commercial power, if the commercial power fails again then there’s another issue- they’ll have to use the ARSR again until they can manually switch to the ASR. The reason is that since the auto switch is out, there’s no way to keep the terminal radar coverage continuous.
What this all adds up to is that if they decide to run on commercial power while they’re waiting for the part to come in, they’re risking losing the radar and having to flop back to using the enroute radar at any time if the commercial power fails. This is a problem because the weather on Wednesday and Thursday was more severe weather possible, with a 70% chance of heavy rain and thunderstorms!
So all this seems to add up to a simple conclusion- stay on the generator, which will almost guarantee the ASR stays up and running. Then there’s no problem with the switch being broken, because we’re already using the backup.
The terminal controllers would be able to provide the highest quality, safest, most efficient service, and then next week when the part comes in, the tech guys will repair the auto power switch and we’ll all be happy.
Here’s the big factor, though- the generator uses 5 or 6 gallons of diesel fuel an hour. And diesel is running $4.50 a gallon. That means for 24-hour coverage, it’s going to run about 600 bucks a day extra.
And in today’s FAA, that’s simply not acceptable. Hey, we’ve got a war to pay for, people.
So here’s the plan the FAA’s management comes up with instead. They intentionally go to enroute (ARSR) radar for a short while and switch back to commercial power to use on the ASR.
They operate on that until a couple of hours before the Vice President is going to fly in. Then they shut down the ASR for a bit and use the ARSR, turn on the generator, and use the ASR on generator power while the VP was in town until after he’d left. This ensures that the VP gets the best quality service we can give.
Once he’s gone, they go back to ARSR for another switch back to commerical power and back to the ASR on the commercial power, going back to money-saving mode.
What does all this technical talk mean?
It means that for 600 dollars a day, the FAA intentionally put the safety and efficiency of the Birmingham airport at risk for the flying public, but when it was the Vice President, they spent the extra money.
And that should really, really, really piss you off. This is the kind of thing that drives the controllers and technicians‘ unions insane. Neither of them wants this; both of us want the best, safest, most efficient service we can provide to the public.
In our mind, 600 bucks a day isn’t really very much money at all to spend to safeguard the lives of the people flying in and around Birmingham. We figure that it’s just going to be a week until the new part gets in, let’s spend the money.
According to the Birmingham Airport’s web page, there’s 160 arrivals and departures daily in and out of the airport. They figure they’ll serve over 3,000,000 passengers this year. If you divide three million passengers a year by 365 days, you get rougly 8200 passengers a day.
Now, that’s no Chicago O’Hare or Atlanta, but that’s still quite a few people.
And if you divide the extra cost of the radar being on generator power 24X7 by the number of passengers it would have served, you know what you get?
7 cents.
To save 7 cents a passenger, the FAA intentionally decided to risk a pretty significant degradation of the quality of services and safety.
They’re willing to SPEND that 7 cents per person when it’s the Vice President, but they wouldn’t spend SEVEN LOUSY CENTS per passenger when it was the general flying public.
That’s what the “run like a business” mentality of the FAA has brought us to. Oh, you’re the Vice President? Sure, you get our best service. What, you’re just Joe Schmoe? Sorry, we’re not willing to spend even just seven cents to make you safer or ensure your flight comes and goes on time.
Seven. Cents. Per. Passenger.
Welcome to the FAA Follies, ladies and gentlemen.
August 4th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Don’t forget the great blog written by John J. Tormey III. His blog is a great place to visit for current happenings over at the FAA,
August 4th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Great job on this story! The FAA continues to make me sick.
The FAA at least went ATC alert when my facility lost their generator for a few days. Compared to the local airport they did good. The same storm left a huge hole in the centerline of the runway but the airport authority wouldn’t close the runway or issue a notam. Took them a few hours before repairing it.
August 4th, 2008 at 7:30 am
Now, I wonder how much “end of year” money is spent on superfluous items like bulletin boards and new graphic art posters and photo frames. You know it must be spent or we won’t have it next year. Fuel is overrated.
August 4th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Brilliant article!!! It should be sent to every news publication in the country to show the insanity we deal with EVERY F%%#*NG DAY!!!
August 4th, 2008 at 9:09 am
In the meantime, all that Secret Service, and travel expense for the VP probably cost the taxpayers a lot more than the $150,000 raised for the Republican party. Should just let the taxpayers write a check, and call it a day.
The waste is incredible. Just my 2 cents, I mean 7 cents.
August 4th, 2008 at 9:13 am
What about sending one of those tech people on one of those airplanes to wherever it was coming from AND GET THE PART? Oh yeah that would have cost money!!! That would have been worth my tax dollars.
August 4th, 2008 at 10:01 am
600 dollars? WE get paid more than that for one day of useless ovetime to train for a system (ERAM) that is being pushed back, delayed for long enough where they will have to train us again (too much time between CBI’s and actual hands on training so I’ll need a mandatory ‘refresher’….)
Waste and Abuse.
August 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Thanks, Justareader. I’ll keep at it. The important thing about blogs, as it turns out, is whether their posts get picked up routinely and swiftly by ‘Google Alerts’ set to ‘keywords’ of interest. That means automatic international dissemination of text, if you post good, non-boring keywords for which people may have already set their Google Alerts. I’d suggest setting Google Alerts for “Sturgell”, “Bobby Sturgell”, “Ruth Leverenz”, and “Airspace Redesign”, at minimum, right about now. You’ll come up with other ‘keywords’ that you want, and you’ll thereupon get e-mailed your results once-a-day if you want. See y’all on the Google search-engine results. We are going to dominate the Internet in a way that the FAA never can, and we will take back the stream of information from those in D.C. that lie to us.
John J. Tormey III, Esq.
Quiet Rockland
http://ejectsturgell.blogspot.com
August 4th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
John,
How will Internet domination change the course of aircraft arriving/departing the NY complex?
August 4th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Cheney is a nobody, doing nothing, from nowhere.
Did you see how his influence helped the Congressional race way down there in northern Mississippi helped out?
A convicted sex offender would have been more help to the Republican candidate.
The GOP is out. They know it too.
The “part time” FAA employees (I’m sorry, “part time FAA APPOINTEES”) are on the chopping block and Congress has a sharp axe to grind. So does Obama.
It will be interesting to see which career employees become collateral losses.
Good luck FAAGuy. Maybe “Made Marion” will throw you a crumb.
Personally, I have you and yours going “under the bus” in my pool.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
>It will be interesting to see which career employees
>become collateral losses. Good luck FAAGuy. Maybe
>“Made Marion” will throw you a crumb.
Come on Safetygrump, if you’ve been around the FAA for awhile, surely you have learned to adapt to different administrations, in both good ways and bad.
August 4th, 2008 at 9:23 pm
Therein lies the problem FAAGuy. You change to whichever way the wind blows. You have no “inegrity” because you whore yourself out shilling the current mantra.
Why don’t you stand up for something. This isn’t a typical employee-employer relationship. This is a safety oriented line of work. Please quit pretending that it is a “business”.
As a taxpayer, I am disappointed that you can sit there and allude to the fact that you can “adapt” to changing administrations so easily. I will continue to separate aircraft the same way regardless of which administration might be in office. I don’t need to hide behind anything.
You, sir, are a coward, Start working now on which political appointee you need to suck up to next. I would rather keep my own INTEGRITY and be able to tell my children that I stand for something. They will know that their Dad cannot be bought as cheaply as you have been.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
ZTL Guy- Well Said. BRAVO!
August 5th, 2008 at 4:19 am
Go get ‘em ZTL Guy. You said what all of us were thinking.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:36 am
FAAGuy the only changes I *adapt* to are changes in the 7110.65.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:19 am
This story should be forwarded immediately to the two Republican Senators from Alabama in an attempt to get these guys to co-sponsor the senate bill Lautenberg and Spector are working on. Great reporting keep it up!
August 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am
>I will continue to separate aircraft the same way regardless of which
>administration might be in office.
ZTLGuy, you missed the point entirely. The separation of the traffic is the only thing that remains constant. In the changing administrations, it’s all the other stuff that is in a state of flux. Did you not see a change when President Clinton took over from three terms of Republican Presidents? You didn’t see 3/5NM & 1000′ change, but all the ancillary stuff did. QTP, permissive bargaining, and “relationships” were all emphasized under the Clinton administration, and THAT’S OK, because that was the result of the election. That’s what the American people voted for-a more labor-friendly Executive Branch. A few years later, the American people voted a different way, and THAT’S OK too.
To call someone a “whore” because they continue to work under differing conditions (depending on who’s in the White House) is applicable to all of us as the administrations change. We all choose to work for money regardless of who the Commander in Chief happens to be, unless of course you tendered your resignation the moment GWB was inagurated because you didn’t want to lose your inegrity (sic).
In the end, with the exception of the President, we in the Executive branch all have a boss, and he/she tells us how they want the job done. If there’s something about that that causes you to lose your integrity, then perhaps you would be more suited to self-employment. Otherwise, next Tuesday when you get your direct deposit paycheck, remember, you’re just like me. We’re all just makin’ a livin’.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Actually, FAA Guy, that’s not entirely true. Under the Bush Administration, the FAA *has* changed the separation standards. What constitutes an operational error now? For years, it was either 5 miles and 1000 feet (or for you terminal pukes, 3 miles or a thousand).
Now? Now you can have a “proximity event” and let ‘em close up to 4.5 miles.
What changed? Did airplanes get better airbags, or big old bumpers, or did the radar technology change? Did we get some kind of supplemental system to the radar that allows us to more exactly specify the aircraft’s location?
Nope. What changed is the political leadership of the FAA has put enough pressure onto the so-called safety professionals, the non-appointee types who are supposed to not care about political ideologies, that those same safety professionals ARE WHORING US OUT.
Nothing really changed as far as the airplanes or systems we use. The Bush Administration just jammed the whole “run like a business” ideology down our throats enough and we rolled over for them.
And the very attention paid to deals changed, too. If it’s not an A or B, the organization as a whole doesn’t care. It used to be that if we lost 5 miles, we treated it seriously; we always kind of knew there were “deals” and then there were “really bad deals”, but in theory we took each and every one the same. It was a loss of the safe separation.
Now, though, since class C and D operational errors don’t count against us for our performance-based pay, we don’t really care about them. The QA weekly updates barely even mention anything that’s not a C or D.
Memphis had a couple dozen errors in a single night when their final ran out too far, but since they were MIA/MVA errors (too close to terrain), nobody really said “hey, this is serious shit- we’re overjamming an airport so much that we put dozens of airplanes into jeopardy!”
So don’t try and sell the notion that in the end, moving the metal remains the same. It’s not. You have a good point about how the differing political ideologies between Clinton and Bush changed some of the other stuff, like QTP and relationships and partnership, but you’re dead wrong in suggesting that the money-driven ideology of the Bush Administration hasn’t changed safety.
It changed it in Lexington, where because the FAA didn’t want to spend the money, they only had one guy working where normally there would be two. And we know what happened there- but oh, that wasn’t a “major” air carrier crash, it was only a regional airline with 50 people.
It’s changed it in facilities nationally, where we’re regularly working shorthanded and/or 6 day workweeks, which tires people out and makes them less capable. Why? Because the Bushies slashed the pay scale and people are retiring in droves.
Like it or not, we DO separate airplanes differently now thanks to the Bush Administration. Denying that, and denying the effects that their money-first, business-decision-driven ideology has had, is silly and revisionist history.
August 5th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
“you’re just like me. We’re all just makin’ a livin’”
FAAGUY, NO I am not just like you. Your paycheck and mine may be from the same source, “taxpayers”, but I am not, JUST LIKE YOU. I make a livin’, as you put it, entrusted with the safety of the flying public and strive to ensure that the trust is well placed during my tour.
WE think, “safety first” and all you can think is we’re makin a livin’. As long as I draw my paycheck, that motto is formost in my mind when directing traffic through my sector. Would it be, or is it yours, while working traffic?
Put your headset on, and tell me that your “just makin a livin” while you work a red sector with weather deviations. I think not.
August 5th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
>Actually, FAA Guy, that’s not entirely true. Under
>the Bush Administration, the FAA *has* changed
>the separation standards.
BEB,
Good post, but me thinks it is you that is suffering a bad case of revisionist history. Separation standards have remained relatively static throghout my career (with the exception of RVSM and 2.5 miles inside the marker). What has changed is how we as an agency respond to a loss of separation.
They hadn’t cleaned up GWB’s inaugural confetti when Jane Garvey and NATCA signed the OE/D MOU, and thus was birthed the concept of Technical Violations. Have a Category D OE and go right back to work without the blink of an eye. Have an Operational Deviation (or three) and take a break while we process all the paperwork, then go back to work. Two months prior it would have meant decertification. Controllers were overheard “it doesn’t count, it was a “D”.
Now I know that all controllers don’t think like that-maybe not even most, but I do know that many people don’t have the same response (both professionally and emotionally) to a PE as they do to a Cat B OE. I think it is because we equate the proximity of the aircraft with their relative safety. The greater the proximity, the greater the safety and vice-versa. To me that’s logical to some degree, but there can be exceptions, such as head-on aircraft that were never seen by the controller where TCAS gets us a CAT C versus a NMAC.
Oh and “Bushed”: I think “safety first” all day long just like you, so we really DO have a lot in common!
August 5th, 2008 at 8:15 pm
FAA GUY,
Another change you may not be aware of is that ALL MVA deals and ALL deals involving flights (I.E. military) are not categorized into the A thru D. I may be wrong, but that is a recent change. Some of the most serious deals involve these two groups….poof….according to the FFA, no they are not.
Safety is being comprimised on an hourly basis at my facility because of this administation.
This is getting very bad, very quickly; people like you are at least partially responsible.
August 6th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Hello Myview,
Going back to the original OE/OD MOU signed by Jane Garvey and NATCA in January 2001, OEs involving terrain have not been assigned a severity index (what is now called the “separation conformance rating”). Under the old MOU (and continued forward to this day) events involving formation flights and non-radar separation also did not get a severity index.
>This is getting very bad, very quickly; people like you are at least
>partially responsible.
I’m curious as to why you think I’m partially responsible.
August 10th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Hey FAA Guy, you see my name, tell us yours, at a minimum tell us your position? I am retired, thank god, so I do not have to worry about people like you. You defend everything the FAA is doing, how about defending what is right? Can you sleep at night knowing what people like you are doing to Air Traffic Safety? You responded to to “Myview” by saying “I’m curious as to why you think I’m partially responsible”. He said People like you are partially responsible, you response indicates that you are involved, so instead of asking Myview, answere is yourself, tell us!!
August 10th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
>Hey FAA Guy, you see my name, tell us yours
Well Greg, I have hesitated to reveal my name due to the response you sometimes see here, “I know John Doe, his mother was a Outlaw biker gang prostitute.” But, since you insist, my name is Publius. You CANNOT imagine what a tough time I had in high school, but because of the warm reception I get here, I feel like taking the emotional risk. In fact, I am trying to legally change my name to FAAGuy, because, of the two, I like FAAGuy a LOT more.
>at a minimum tell us your position? (sic)
My position is an FAA employee since right after the strike. I worked enough before this job to realize what a true blessing this job is. Ever worked construction in the summer?
>You defend everything the FAA is doing
Now Greg, you know that just isn’t true.
>you (sic) response indicates that you are involved
Sorry Greg, I do not set FAA policy, that happens WAY above my pay grade.