700 Days Without a Contract

One of the great things about the GNB community is all the ideas you all share in the comment threads and in emailing me (us). My recent focus/obsession with the plight of airlines, pilots and air traffic controllers, lead one reader to send me an amazing set of links to blogs written by Controllers and I also found some by pilots.

The reader asked, "Why doesn't the progressive b'sphere ever tune into the frequency of any of the excellent air traffic controller blogs?"

Why indeed? I think it is largely that that are so many outrages, so many evils and incompetencies perpetrated by this administration in the last 8 years and the conservative agenda of the last 30 that it is hard to follow even a small % of the topics that need covering.

While looking around the great blogs she sent me to I found this fact.

Air Traffic Controllers who keep everyone of us safe when we fly have been operating without a contract for over 700 days!

Don Brown from Get the Flick is asking for our help.
Write your senator. ASAP!

Senator _______,

I am writing to ask you to sign on as a cosponsor of S3416 -- The Federal Aviation Administration Employee Retention Act.

The FAA's controllers have been without a contract for over 700 days. Controllers are retiring faster than the FAA can train new-hires. Please help resolve this situation now -- before any more damage is done to our National Airspace System.

Please become a cosponsor of The Federal Aviation Administration Employee Retention Act.

======================

Copy the text above and then click here to find your Senators. Fill in the blanks, sign your name and you’re done. Time yourself. You’ll be done in less that 5 minutes. I promise it won’t hurt.
--Don Brown

Don is a retired controller trying to help his former colleagues and expose all the BS that puts Americans in danger every time we fly. He is a patriot for sure and his blog is quite interesting though at times, very scary.

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To the Highest Bidder

I am sure it will surprise you to know that there is a scheme a foot to auction off the runway take off and landing spots at high traffic airports like JFK in New York. And of course it will surprise you even more to know that George Bush and Co. are behind the new plan.

Apparently this new competitive runway plan has to do with busy flight schedules but even more it has to do with having not enough air traffic control staff.

The Bush administration’s decision to impose caps on flights at the three major airports in the New York area, and its plans to auction landing slots at the three airports in a first-of-its-kind experiment to handle congestion, are the subject of intense debate at a House subcommittee hearing in Washington.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been a persistent critic of the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration, excoriated both agencies on Wednesday morning, saying the Bush administration had resorted to “ideological, market-based theory,” while doing little to fill vacancies among air-traffic controllers.

“Instead of focusing on real, tested solutions to solve this problem, like upgrading decades-old technology and hiring an adequate number of controllers to staff New York’s towers, the D.O.T. continues to miss the point,” Mr. Schumer said. “To make matters worse, the F.A.A.’s treatment of controllers has lead to an unprecedented rash of retirements thus compounding the problem.”

At many air-traffic control towers across the country, more than one-third of the staff consists of trainees, Mr. Schumer said. Developmental trainees comprised 25 percent of all controllers nationally as of December 2007, up from about 15 percent in 2004, he said.

Ok, so far my airline/ airport reading and writing have turned up-- unsafe fueling practices, bad FAA leadership, and moves to privatize/ profit-ize critical airport systems as well as a lack of trained and skilled staff. This is in addition to new bag charges, water charges, seat charges and extra fuel charges. I think we are looking at some major impending crashes here. (pun intended)

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