CTI students react apprehensively to Senate Report on HR3058
The already widely-publicized controller staffing crisis means there has never been a better time to not only stimulate interest in the air traffic control profession, but to also ensure that students complete air traffic control training successfully and move quickly into the facilities where they are sorely needed. To that end, NATCA has advocated for several years the position that ATC training should be revamped to minimize redundancy between collegiate training initiative (CTI) programs and the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, Okla. The anticipated result is shorter training time and a marked increase in new hires.
“We have always believed that CTI students are ready for air traffic facilities, and ready right now,” NATCA President John Carr stated. “They are smart, eager, ready to learn, and desperately needed in the field. There is nothing to be gained by sending them to the Academy.”
Recently, a Senate report accompanying the ratified Transportation Bill HR3058 states that the FAA has finally agreed to reduce ATC training time as part of its goal to hire 12,500 new air traffic controllers by 2014. In the report, the committee states that it “agrees that the FAA’s policy of requiring all graduates from FAA’s collegiate training initiative (CTI) program to attend the [FAA] Academy’s basic course is redundant, costly and time-consuming.” Consequently, the FAA plans to instead use the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City to provide a “comprehensive, option specific training program” for air traffic controller candidates.
Additionally, the report notes that “the committee directs the FAA to develop a method to assess whether or not individual CTI graduates are prepared to enter option specific training, and allow those who are to bypass the Academy basic training.”
“It’s a step in the right direction for increasing staffing at facilities across the country,” NATCA Executive Vice President Ruth Marlin noted. “Doing away with redundant training will speed up the process of getting the much needed new controllers to their facilities, where they will fill current staffing gaps and replace the growing population of retirees.”
“Skipping the Academy has the added bonus of keeping controller candidates safe from a hostile work environment,” added Carr. “The FAA is firing students at the Academy for very minor disciplinary infractions, continuing the agency’s malicious new policy of workforce intimidation.”
However, even while the union celebrates this rare FAA-NATCA consensus on ATC training, the report has some worried about the lack of standardization in CTI training. The majority of CTI students and instructors polled agree that a key component to a successful reduced-training plan would be the agency taking the initiative to improve and standardize CTI training across the country. However, this method would likely cost the FAA more money, a risk the agency isn’t likely to take.
According to Professor Bill Butler of the Division of Aviation Technology at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, “If realistic quality standards are imposed [for CTI training], some of the CTI schools will not measure up, reducing the already inadequate output of the CTI program. FAA will need to fund improvements at those schools, and at others which have not yet joined the program.”
“If direct hire is to be implemented,” he continued, “standards for the schools relating to curriculum, instructor competence and experience, and simulation will need to be developed and imposed. Principal operations inspectors will need to be assigned to each school, […] and performance standards set for prospective graduates. It would also require a mechanism for FAA personnel to provide performance verification to the graduates, perhaps to recommend remedial course work or simulation prior to graduation.”
While some may consider the concerns unwarranted because the FAA hasn’t indicated plans to phase out the Academy, it is interesting that this shared apprehension among the ranks tends to lead back to an overall frustration and disappointment with the FAA, its recent decisions, and its treatment of both CTI students and the controller workforce. “What is our reward for going through CTI school, for subjecting ourselves to their arbitrary standards, for going to the Academy for low wages?” another student posed. “It’s a chance to work at an understaffed facility with not enough resources for proper training, while most likely being subjected to a B-scale pay system.”
“I just hope NATCA is able to get Congress to care about what is happening,” noted one CTI student. “Otherwise, it is going to be a tough job for any CTI-er lucky enough to get hired.”
To that end, Carr has some encouraging words for CTI students who are feeling less than optimistic about possible changes in the ATC training system. “They should keep studying, get through the program, and let NATCA fight the agency for them,” he said. “We welcome new controllers, and I encourage everyone to avoid despondency regarding the agency’s brutal assault on its own workers—our members will still be pushing tin long after this ‘culture change’ has faded into the obscurity from whence it came.”
