I used to be proud to work for the
Federal Aviation Administration. To be able to answer "I'm an
air traffic controller" is certainly an ego boost; perhaps a bit too prideful, but considering the process of training and the odds against becoming a controller, I think anyone who's signed off in a facility has earned the right.
Today, I'm embarrassed to work for the FAA. It's become a horribly dysfunctional agency that's lost sight of its goals and reason for existence. We're run by political appointees who don't know what they're doing in terms of aviation safety. Our managers are less and less qualified for their jobs the higher up the organizational chart you go, to the extent where the people who should have the most skills and knowledge are, sadly, stupid assholes driven by a political agenda.
Good people do exist in many of those jobs, but they're overwhelmed by the hayseeds, half-wits and morons who've staged a coup d'etat, hijacking the agency that used to be the absolute best in the world at ensuring the safety of the skies.
So I figure it's time to really tell my story, of how I've gone from being an anti-union believer in whatever the FAA Administrator told me to a semi-bitter cynic. I disliked unions. I believed in the FAA's propaganda, that we were the best in the world, that we'd always BE the best in the world, and that the people in charge knew what they were doing and leading us well. Now... well, you can tell what I think about them now.
The title of my blog is "The Blue Eyed Buddhist" and I can honestly say that if I hadn't gotten that old-time Buddhist religion when I did, I don't know if I could have handled the past year or so in the FAA. I struggle almost daily at work with the urge to just scream "are you fucking KIDDING ME or what?" at the FAA's honchos.
This is a multi-part post... and I suspect it'll turn out fairly long.
Part I- History...
My father was an air traffic controller, team supervisor, area manager, and staff manager for the FAA. He also served for a short while as the Assistant Air Traffic Manager (Acting), or what we would call "acting deputy chief".
I grew up thinking that ATC was a pretty cool profession. It was, too. Dad would take me in to work from time to time- probably not all that often, just a few times, but those things can make a big impression on a little kid.
The controllers were all cracking jokes, confident and gregarious. There was a haze in the air, probably 50% of them had a lit cigarette (this was back in the days when controllers could smoke in the control room, and many, many controllers did) and the SmokeEaters chugged away to keep up.
The radar scopes- when I first visited, they were still flat, I think. The junior controllers pushed the little "shrimp boats" along with the targets to keep track. I might not be remembering this correctly; I was born in 1969, and I'm pretty sure they had done away with the shrimp boats by the time I was old enough to visit, but for some reason I recall flat scopes.
A shrimp boat is a little piece of plastic that air traffic controllers used to use. The radar displays didn't have data tags on them; there was simply a four-digit number displayed, so to keep track of the call signs of each aircraft they'd jot it on the shrimp boat. Then they'd have to physically move the shrimp boat along the scope's surface as the airplane flew along.
I remember being amazed and delighted and mystified at how the controllers would shift from cracking jokes with their co-workers to spitting out arcane incantations in what sounded like a foreign language... "United sixty-seven squawk two five four five, fly heading one zero zero, vectors for Yakima vee oh are, rest of route unchanged..."
To be an air traffic controller, working in a big dark room, talking to airplanes... speaking that mysterious language... man, that seemed like a heck of a fun time. Of course, this was way before I understood how jobs were, and how work really was. I just thought controllers were, like my dad, pretty dang cool guys.
Way, way back in the mists of time, the air traffic controllers' union was PATCO- the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. PATCO led its guys on sickouts from time to time, to get better working conditions, raises, stop abusive managers from running roughshod over their people. It was officially recognized as the sole bargaining agent for controllers (certified as their union) the year I was born, in 1969.
But Seattle Center (ZSE), Dad's facility and mine today, was always doing things a tad different. At one point, they decertified PATCO to form their own union, the Seattle Center Controllers Union. SCCU was formed because as a smaller center, with less traffic, ZSE controllers lagged behind and didn't get as much pay as controllers in bigger, busier centers.
Dad was a leader in this movement. SCCU went away and PATCO was again the union for controllers. Dad became a team supe and was serving in that role at the time of the strike in 1981, but he still sympathized with the union. In fact, the truck I learned to drive in had a PATCO sticker on it until after the 1981 strike.
When they went out, we had to cut short a vacation so Dad could go back to work. When President Reagan gave his ultimatum, Dad broke the rules big-time and called the guys on his crew. (A supervisor talking with controllers was very forbidden at that point.) He called every single guy, even the ones he didn't like, and told them the score- that between the military guys, the many staff guys, and the supes, that the FAA was going to continue to function and that they really were going to get fired.
Only two of ten came back; the other eight were out of a job. Dad, of course, wound up working 6-day weeks, with many ten-hour (or more) days. It was a big-time loss for me, because I was 12 and he'd done typical Dad stuff- coaching baseball, going to my sports games, etc. That stuff, by and large, went by the wayside because he was always at work.
I survived, of course; there are far worse things than your dad working a lot. And he was able to be around for lots of things anyway, although between the typical ATC schedule and the extra hours for a few years after the strike he missed out a lot of things.
Somehow, I managed to escape graduate from Enumclaw High School a few years later. I was a typical under-achiever; I had the highest total SAT score in my class. Or second, or third, or something like that. My 2.8ish GPA (out of 4) indicated the amount of work that I put in to school, though.
I slogged off to college, only to flame out within a year and a half. I'd score an A in an interesting class and not go to the boring ones. I quit because I was wasting my family's money and my own, and went to work delivering pizzas for a while, then got on at the local ski resort, Crystal Mountain, working both winter and summer seasons.
Meanwhile, the remaining and new air traffic controllers had already formed a new union. The FAA had gone on a massive hiring binge, of course, with huge numbers of people coming in through the 80s. Showing that they hadn't really learned much, though, their human relations skills were bad enough that even the giant failure of the PATCO strike and union didn't stop the controllers; they formed up the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) anyway.
Dad nagged at me to take the ATC entrance exam. This was a pencil-and-paper civil service test specifically designed for identifying candidates for controller training. By the time I took it, in 1990, you had to have a pretty high score to get hired in the Northwest Mountain Region (my home). I nailed the test pretty good- 99.7- and kept working at Crystal.
At the time, the FAA only hired somewhere less than 10% of those that took this test. This was the first culling-out of those that wanted to be controllers but didn't have that weird mix of skills that the job requires.
18 months after having taken the test, the FAA called to offer me a job. To be honest, I'd almost forgotten about it. During that time, despite his management position, Dad never called the regional office (which handled hiring). He and I both didn't want even the tiniest appearance of any undue influence being used.
On January 11, 1991, I reported to the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, in wonderful Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. This began my career in the FAA.
This is a multi-part series cross-posted from my blog, A Blue Eyed Buddhist
You can also read the other parts here on DailyKos:
Part I
Part II, which was featured as a diary rescue! Thanks!
Part III
Part IV
or by going to my blog and clicking on the "FAA/NATCA" category.