The FAA Follies

Short post for me today.

I had the recent misfortune to hear the FAA Anthem. A few thoughts came to mind:

• I didn’t know we had a FAA Chorale.

• Do they get duty time to practice?

• With all their recent “training” of management about the generational differences to be take into consideration with the new hires, why would the upper echelons write/choose this as the Agency’s anthem? I think they missed the mark by a couple generations, not just one.

• If this is supposed to make the flying public feel safer, someone please tell me how.

• If this is supposed to make the current employees feel warm and fuzzy about working for this Agency, I think it needs a lot of work…from scratch.

• I hope the Agency isn’t planning on adding this to any new training videos.

• Someone give me back the radio in the operational quarters. OEs have gone up since they took it away; the distraction of the remaining silence is obviously the cause.

(Okay, that last one has nothing to do with the FAA Anthem other than the absolute horror at the thought that management might think listening to it might make us more productive.)

This is not intended to be a slam against the members of the FAA Chorale. It’s more about the decisionmakers in the FAA who believe that something like this is going to make a difference in our workplaces or with the flying public. In my opinion, it ranks slightly above advertising on MySpace and Craigslist for controllers.