The FAA Follies

At my facility, we’ve been receiving mandatory training on the Air Traffic Organization’s (ATO’s) “Spirit of Performance”. Thus far, it’s included three videos that we’re required to watch with our supervisor and “have a dialogue” on what we’ve viewed and our thoughts on what we’ve seen. The absolute best thing I can say about these videos is that the music is much more palatable than we are usually subjected to in a FAA video.  Spirit of Performance’s acronym of SOP, in my opinion, is a not-so-subtle attempt to give it some unconscious importance in the minds of the workforce as most of us, correctly, associate the acronym SOP with Standard Operating Procedures.

The links to the videos are to where the FAA posted them on YouTube.  They’ve been online from 4-7 months and as of this writing have received a total of less than 1400 hits.  Wonder where the hit count will be in a couple weeks.

The first of these videos was “ATO Customer Service.” 6 minutes and 29 seconds of my life I won’t get back….twice, since I viewed it again on my personal time for my own edification. In my original briefing, it seemed to me that the word “customer” was used quite a bit, so I watched again to find that the word was used 20 times. That’s an average of once every 20 seconds or so.  However, variants of the word “safe” (safer, safest, safely, safety), only occurred 10 times.  Over the course of all three videos, the word “customer” was used almost twice as often as those variants of “safe.”

In the video, Steve Osterdahl, states, “The customer, for us, in the purest sense of the word, is the people that fly the airplanes.” Perhaps Steve is unfamiliar with Section 332 of HR915 FAA Reauthorization Act of 2009. (Note: this legislation is in committee in the House.)

SEC. 332. MODIFICATION OF CUSTOMER SERVICE INITIATIVE.

(b) Modification of Initiative- Not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration shall modify the customer service initiative, mission and vision statements, and other statements of policy of the Agency–

(1) to remove any reference to air carriers or other entities regulated by the Agency as `customers’;
(2) to clarify that in regulating safety the only customers of the Agency are individuals traveling on aircraft; and
(3) to clarify that air carriers and other entities regulated by the Agency do not have the right to select the employees of the Agency who will inspect their operations.

(c) Safety Priority- In carrying out the Administrator’s responsibilities, the Administrator shall ensure that safety is given a higher priority than preventing the dissatisfaction of an air carrier or other entity regulated by the Agency with an employee of the Agency.

The Agency’s errant “customer” focus has been blogged here before on the Follies in an excellent post by Publius, another by BEB and mentioned in the comments section here, so I’m not going to say much about it all, except to note that despite the beatings the FAA has taken from the public, media and Congress about their “customer” focus, they are still pushing the concept at the workforce…making it mandatory training.  I’ve been around the block a few times so I recognize the training for what it really is, but since those of us who’ll be leaving the Agency in the next 6 or 7 years aren’t really the Agency’s “target audience,” it may have its desired effect here or there with some of the newbies…getting them to bypass their union in the name of “customer service.”

Video #2 was ATO Focus on the Future. A couple of interesting quotes here:

And you, the ATO workforce, MUST adapt.

We MUST embrace and enable NextGen technologies and we MUST plan for facilities and workforce changes.

Hank Krakowski, who has been in his position about a year and a half, says:

Look forward to working with you to make it happen.

One of my most passionate goals is to try to reset the atmosphere between labor and management here within FAA.

One of the real opportunities we have, though, is that we’re going to be replacing almost all of our controller workforce and many FAA people in general over the next 10 years.  It would be a tragedy and a management failure, in my opinion, if we just take those new employees and replicate the environment that we currently have.

Hank has had some time to attempt to work with us to make it happen and to start making inroads in reaching “one of his most passionate goals”…and has fallen short time and time again.  The Agency has hired about 20-25% of the people they’re going to need to replace those controllers that have retired or will retire in the coming years, yet they’re being indoctrinated in the “environment that we currently have.”  Start your attitude adjustments within your management ranks, Hank, because management is failing bigtime.  Of course, Hank’s “resetting the atmosphere” comment may actually refer to busting the various unions so that employees are dealing with management individually and make it easier for management to ignore their employees’ concerns and bulldoze ahead with their less-than-clearly-stated plans.

Interestingly enough, during Hank’s discussion of SWIM – System Wide Information Management, he goes on to say how the deployment of ASDE-X has aided management with SWIM by giving them real-time information on aircraft locations.  (Note: the second link is to Harris, who’s been bringing us FTI.) Funny, he never mentions that NATCA was pushing for ASDE-X to be deployed for immediate gains in safety at least as early as 2001 and that only after the Agency was publicly embarrassed by NATCA in 2005 did they decide to revisit their decision to scrap some of the deployments. The Agency is still behind on many modernization projects, but maybe we’ll start seeing some more ASDE-X installations, now that management can use it for their own purposes.  Obviously, runway safety was not a good enough reason.

Video #3 is ATO Your Contribution. Hank says about NextGen that the Agency has spent the “last 6 years planning it, now it’s time to implement it.” Perhaps, Hank should inform the workforce…or Congress…what exactly NextGen is – the exact components that will be implemented and why. I heard that the Agency will be “redeploying assets and people in the system”. Must be talking about all those realignments, consolidations and collocations that the Agency is planning without transparency or actual data to back up supposed cost savings or consideration of the negative effects on safety. Oh, Hank, guess what?  If you really want to “reset the atmosphere between labor and management,” you might want to start including the primary stakeholders in your plans…the unions representing the various workforces.

The video caused me (being low on the workforce totem pole and all) some confusion. At one point, it says to hear what “your colleagues” have to say, but all said individuals speaking were members of management, not my colleagues. Then at the end, it suggests “be adaptable and accept feedback.” Now, does that mean that management should be adaptable and accept feedback from the workforce (unions)? Or that the workforce should be adaptable and accept feedback from management?

My feedback to my supervisor was that he really didn’t want my feedback…the Agency has made that abundantly clear to me over the last few years.  When my union has a real place at the table, I’ll be happy to consider working, as a union representative, toward making the Agency’s nebulous, undefined vision(s) of NextGen a safe, workable reality.  Otherwise, color me unimpressed, uninterested and to do no more than the minimum.  Unless, of course, it involves highlighting the Agency’s continued failures publicly.