“Trouble in the Air,” Feature, 10/18
Money Trumps Safety
I read your article “Trouble in the Air” published October 18 and want to express my gratitude for shining the light on a situation that is becoming volatile.
I am an air traffic controller at Oakland Center who works those quick turnarounds with the graveyard shift. I have been doing it for almost 10 years now. I also have a three-year-old, and a baby that is due in two weeks. The tough part of it all is that my wife is also a controller at Oakland Center. We have to juggle our schedules to care for our children, which becomes frustratingly impossible sometimes. So far we have been able to do it, we just don’t know for how much longer.
I can attest to the low morale that we are experiencing at work. Within the last month I have witnessed high tension between controllers while working traffic. It is this kind of distractions that are clearly becoming unintended consequences that the FAA miscalculated when imposing their work rules. This distraction is where safety becomes compromised.
My father was a controller for 40 years with the FAA and I can honestly say that this is my dream job. I still love working airplanes, but it is unfortunate that I can’t do it anywhere else but with the FAA. Conditions are as low as I have ever seen them.
I am a dedicated professional who holds the safety of the flying public as a sacred trust … as do my co-workers. But it’s unfortunate that money has become a priority over safety.
Bill Rodenhurst, San Ramon
Next Up, Privatization
Good article, but I think you overlooked the obvious — Bush’s attempt to privatize all government services. The argument is that since the FAA cannot manage our air traffic control system (while simultaneously gutting efforts to upgrade the infrastructure), we should just hand it over to a private contractor — a private contractor who will further reduce wages and impose harsh working conditions; all in the name of profit. Not my idea of safe air space.
Robert Ruhl, San Francisco
Something Has Got to Give
Your article concerning the air traffic controller situation is right on. This is not an exaggeration. It is so frustrating trying to get the nature of the job explained to the general public. My time on position has dramatically increased in just the last few months, and it will, no doubt, get worse. It is difficult to explain the difference between working heavy jet traffic for 45 minutes and getting a break versus working for one and a half to two hours or more until getting a shorter break … then knowing you are going back in to do the same thing again. The thoughts behind the current management structure and imposed work rules are mind-boggling. Stress has only increased, morale continues to decrease, air traffic continues to increase and staffing levels continue to decrease. Something has got to give.
Doug Dunham, Crawfordsville, Indiana
Here Comes Outsourcing
The controllers being hired now are being “hired on the cheap,” much like he [Bush] does everything, such as Iraq. What I am seeing is too few, paid way too little, and too many with insufficient aptitude to do the job in the larger and more difficult facilities.
To get 2,500 controllers trained and able to work in the busier facilities will require hiring 6,000 young people. You will net 2,500, lose 2,500, and hopefully get 1,000 for the smaller, less difficult facilities. To keep pace for the next four years, upward of 15,000 will have to be hired — that, I swear, is no joke.
What Bush wants to do is make it so bad that he can just turn it over to his friends in the military-industrial complex. Let them suck up billions, buy really good attorneys and insurance, pay the workers peanuts, and pocket a fistful of dollars — for companies like Lockheed, WCG, etc.
Domenic Torchia, Columbia, California
Get the Word Out
Congratulations on your thorough and balanced look at ATC since the strike. I was a journeyman controller at LA Center up until 1981. The general public just has no clue about what happens behind the scenes in ATC … and many pilots aren’t much better informed.
Sam Wachtel, Cordova, Tennessee
One Day in Florida
Ah, me! I’ve lost count of media reports of the effects of Ronald Reagan’s firing of 11,400 controllers in 1981.
I concede that your writer described Reagan’s reckless mass firings with more precision than other sources. The others have omitted the deadly situations that have gone unreported because the FAA has a “no-tell” policy about near-midair events.
You mentioned my friend, Californian Dom Torchia, in your report. Dom is an experienced controller familiar with understaffing and doubled and tripled workload factors, so you would be well-advised to deepen your probing of current conditions in ATC facilities compared to pre-1981 facts.
President Bill Clinton saw the folly of Reagan’s stupidity and tried to correct it, but the FAA is bossed by an equally stupid Republican president, George W. Bush, so the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Your writer did a good job probing facts about crashes in which current controllers were adjudicated to be partially to blame. Those that were reported, that is. What your writer was powerless to uncover were the many incidents in a given year where the FAA successfully covers them up. Then the NTSB plays with the facts for a year and a half before publishing its results, which were obvious to any controller or pilot ten minutes after the occurrence.
How do they cover what in the business are called “systems errors”? Easy: Every radio and telephone conversation in a US air traffic control facility is recorded on two-inch tape, usually in the basement of the building. It’s a simple matter for a watch supervisor to erase the recording of the incident as if it had never happened. … It was a long time ago, but a Jacksonville air route traffic control center supervisory controller relieving a journeyman controller for lunch caused what would have been an “international incident” when the FAA erased a near miss between a German Luftwaffe Boeing 707 carrying the then-Chancellor of Germany Willy Brandt and an Eastern Airlines flight fifty miles northeast of Jacksonville. The supervisor on duty made a beeline for the basement and erased the interphone and radio tapes for that sector. The shaken Eastern captain blared in the controller’s ear, “Who’s this goddamned German?” That meant they had come so near that the Eastern pilot could read the Luftwaffe tail insignia.
I was working the adjacent radar position and immediately saw and heard everything. I called for a relief controller and headed for the pay phone upstairs, where I contacted the PATCO National Office and told our safety overseer the whole story. The FAA then turned a deaf ear to the barrage of phone calls from the media, saying they had no record of any near miss over Jacksonville. What they overlooked was the cockpit voice recorder in the Eastern Boeing 727. Our local PATCO rep met the flight at LaGuardia Airport and talked the captain into letting him make a recording of the CVR. That evening, despite the FAA denials that anything whatsoever had happened, Walter Cronkite led off his evening newscast with a story about the Chancellor of Germany nearly being killed in a near-midair collision over Florida.
The German’s near-midair collision with an American air carrier may be old news today, but the FAA still uses the “three monkey” method of not seeing, hearing, or telling about near-midair collisions. The direct cause of the misinformation stance is that FAA administrators are almost always dartboarded from among a list of retired or passed-over military officers accustomed to taking orders from the perpetually limp-brained administration in Washington. They know how to follow orders, no matter how stupid or immoral the orders may be; ergo, they are awarded a lateral arabesque to FAA Administrator, or a robotic facsimile thereof.
Like Ronald Reagan, they act according to what’s written in their scripts.
Bill South, Jacksonville, Florida
Thanks
I’m a controller, and I thought your piece did a great job capturing what our current environment is like. Thanks for getting the message out.
Eric Labardini, Spring, Texas
The FAA Follows NASA
As an air traffic controller for 18 years, I wanted to say thank you for your article. I hope more Americans come to realize the danger that the FAA is placing them in every time they board a commercial aircraft. The FAA is going the route of NASA, trying to do more with less and in the end it is going to cause a tragedy. As a side note, I will be forced to retire at 56, but did you know the FAA is actively recruiting PATCO controllers now who are in their 60s? Makes you wonder how much they really care about age-related safety, doesn’t it. Again, thank you for your article.
Bradley Biggar, Midland, Texas
“A Church for the Nonbelievers,” Cityside, 10/18
I saved another soul
Jonathan Kaminsky’s article regarding the recent meeting of Atheists and Agnostics Group of Rossmoor has given me tremendous insight into the true reasons for my atheism. It has changed my life forever.
Kaminsky’s penetrating analysis has clearly shown me that, in my role of leading the discussion at this meeting, I was looking only to cower opponents into submission. He mentions an incident in which I interrupted an agnostic — failing to mention that I asked her permission first — and then notes that my counter to her reply succeeded in quelling the unbelievers’ tendency to question and rebel, if only temporarily. Yes, clearly my purpose is to be the antithesis of an evangelical minister, keeping my flock in blind submission to the almighty god of atheism — a kind of Antichrist.
Kaminsky then says that I resumed talking only to be interrupted by a woman who asked for a second time if I would point out the paragraph from which I was reading. Of course he leaves out that after my success at quieting the flock, I asked the agnostic to please continue with what she was saying. But really, is that relevant to the main point being made by Kaminsky?
Anyway, when the woman asked if I could point out what paragraph I was reading from, I did indeed ask her why she couldn’t simply listen to the few sentences from the article she was supposed to have already read, rather than having to read them as I spoke them. Clearly this was because I wanted the flock subdued, rather than because I was skipping around in my quotes, and it would have been tedious in the extreme to point out the position of each sentence. And of course my response had nothing to do with the demanding tone of the woman stating that she must be able to follow along as I read.
Then Kaminsky mentions the high point of the meeting for me: a convert confessed that she used to be a polite agnostic who now proudly calls herself an atheist. Praise God-Who-Does-Not-Exist! I saved another soul from the hell of religion and its confused cousin, agnosticism.
I deeply appreciate this insight into what I liked about the meeting. In my naïveté, I thought it was the way in which our arguments turned into discussions that yielded both sides having a better understanding of each other. For example, a brilliant man who commonly disagrees with me approached me after the meeting to tell me that he arrived feeling quite antagonistic toward my position, and left feeling that we had a lot in common. This might have been a product of my stating that his definition of his agnosticism was my definition of my atheism. But truly I can see how such incidents were below the radar of the dear Mr. Kaminsky, as they were irrelevant to his dominant thesis that I am a fundamentalist atheist, the flip side of a fundamentalist Christian.
Next Kaminsky mentions Ron, a self-proclaimed militant atheist, who had the disturbing thought that since he cannot prove there is no God, he must declare himself an agnostic. Kaminsky, in the spirit of journalistic objectivity, characterizes the article being discussed as “arguing that agnostics should quit playing coy and simply confess that they don’t believe in God.” Again the esteemed journalist is able to see through the sophistry of the atheist position to its intellectual core. The final section of the atheist article stated: “Atheism does not depend on certain knowledge of the nonexistence of God(s). It depends on the nonexistence of certain knowledge of God(s).” The burden of proof lies with the person presenting the proposition; if there is a lack of valid evidence, then the proposition is considered unworthy of consideration. This is called the null hypothesis in science. Ron stated that this insight resulted in his feeling again comfortable calling himself an atheist.
But Kaminsky was able to see through this pseudo-intellectualism and get to the bottom of the atheist position, and my fundamentalist atheism in particular.
I am eternally grateful to Mr. Kaminsky for his unwavering commitment to truth and the standards of journalism. I only wish that others will have their lives likewise changed by his insightful analysis.
Larry Hicok, East Bay Atheists, Pinole
Ixnay on the achestay
In the October 18 article “A Church for the Nonbelievers,” the reader might conclude that the recent meeting of the Atheists and Agnostics Group of Rossmoor (Walnut Creek) was frequented by a gaudy array of kooky seniors, judging from the way some of the attendees were described: “A woman dressed all in turquoise”; “a large man with a white mustache and red suspenders”; and “a man with poofy blond hair.” In addition, the speaker, Larry Hicok, “a take-no-prisoners atheist” and head of East Bay Atheists, whose monthly meetings take place in Berkeley’s main library, was demonized as a silence-inflicting authoritarian who gradually became wearied down by the unruly gallery of cantankerous coots, nonbelievers with that atheistic “tendency to question and rebel.” That stuff makes for a colorful essay and fun reading, but here such a take is deceptive and unfair.
Readers are invited to attend a meeting to find out for themselves that these meetings are frequented by civil, inquiring, intelligent individuals, and that they are well-conducted, educational, and quite rewarding. There are provisos to this invitation, though. Since we care about how the atheist community is viewed by the press, we must insist on prudent garb just in case there’s a reporter in the audience. Everybody will be obliged to wear a one-size-fits-all white tupa. No brightly-hued or poofy hair; no paunchy men sporting red suspenders. Unlike Islam, atheism does not pressure women to wear scarves, but scarves or veils would be nice — as long as they are not turquoise in color. Ladies, please wear “sensible” shoes. You know, like Queen Elizabeth’s orthopedic shoes. Try to dress as much like her as you can, because there will be a prize for the most unimaginative shoes. (No sandals or bare feet.) And men, if you insist on wearing red suspenders, place them under the tupa. And ixnay on those white mustaches.
Ron Ermini, Oakland
