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NEWS The eff ects of sequestration have been profound.


Preventative maintenance was halted, and engineers and systems specialists employed a fi x-on-fail policy, meaning that they waited until equipment actually failed before replacing it. This policy has created obvious safety concerns and resulted in excessive and avoidable air traffi c delays. Future rounds of sequestration cuts will likely force the FAA to adopt these types of policies again and create an unnecessary backlog in critical maintenance work. Even if a long-term FAA reauthorization is passed, until sequestration is permanently ended our NAS is in jeopardy of falling behind on effi ciency, capacity, and most importantly, safety.


FAA Reforms The budget challenges facing the FAA, combined with the agency’s troubles managing important modernization eff orts, have led to a debate in Washington about possible funding and structural reforms. We will participate vigorously in that debate and will insist that the U.S. government invest in the FAA’s workforce and upgrading and replacing the FAA’s aging infrastructure, stabilize the FAA’s operating budget, ensure enhanced oversight of the industry and airspace, and continue modernizing the NAS through the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) initiative. The next FAA Reauthorization needs to set the foundation to achieve these goals. Transportation labor welcomes the debate on how to


properly fund and/or restructure the FAA – including its air traffi c control system – to ensure the agency receives the sustained and reliable funding it needs to make strategic long-term investments in its workforce and infrastructure. Congress should consider solutions such as dedicated spending for the FAA, multi-year appropriations, or moving the FAA spending off -budget. Congress could also provide the agency with some additional fl exibility to transfer funds between accounts as needed in order to better accommodate the ebbs and fl ows of the federal budget process and maintain a high level of service and safety. These proposals would stabilize the agency’s funding without undermining the dedicated FAA workforce or requiring a complete overhaul of the FAA’s structure.


FAA Staffi ng and Training The FAA also continues to face serious problems regarding staffi ng, especially considering that one third of its workforce, including air traffi c controllers, aviation safety inspectors, and systems specialists, will be eligible to retire starting this year. Sequestration also led the FAA to institute a hiring freeze for most of 2013. The hiring freeze compounded the already tenuous staffi ng situation from which the FAA may not recover. Even if the FAA replaced these retiring workers immediately, the training for employees throughout the agency is extensive and it can take two to fi ve years to fully train new hires. One need only look at the dramatic reduction in capacity during the recent sequestration furloughs to see the eff ects of an


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understaff ed, resource-starved agency. Furthermore, FAA operations within the current budget environment are presenting major challenges for the FAA workforce and the aviation system, which is resulting in limited funding for travel, challenges performing inspections and other surveillance activity, reduced or delayed maintenance of critical systems and equipment, and diffi culty in meeting growing industry demands with its manufacturing and certifi cation process. Without guaranteed, suffi cient funding to ensure the current workforce remains on the job while a new generation of employees is hired and provided suffi cient time and access to thorough on-the-job training, there is no way the FAA can guarantee there will be enough aviation safety inspectors, certifi cation engineers, air traffi c controllers, systems specialists, and other employees in place to secure the growth, effi ciency, and safety of the system. Understaffi ng hinders facilities throughout the country from deploying NextGen programs, procedures, and equipment. At many air traffi c facilities there are not enough fully certifi ed air traffi c controllers to cover operational positions and systems specialists to perform maintenance and certifi cation while their peers serve as front-line subject matter experts performing NextGen research, development, implementation, and training. The FAA bill must also take steps to improve the FAA


worker staffi ng and training models. Simply stated, the FAA faces a staffi ng crisis, and properly training new hires is a lengthy process. In addition to the funding concerns, the FAA’s staffi ng and training models should be updated to better meet the needs of the NAS. For instance, Congress should require the FAA to develop a formalized training plan to ensure FAA systems specialists, aviation safety inspectors, and certifi cation engineers are kept current on all technologies, and the agency must continue to fully embrace modern training alternatives that allow for more virtual and online learning. Additionally, Congress should support the FAA and the National Air Traffi c Controllers Association’s (NATCA) recent eff ort to improve the FAA’s previously fl awed placement and transfer process for air traffi c controllers. The new process, once implemented, will allow for greater opportunities for career development and save the FAA money while meeting the critical staffi ng needs at the busiest and most complex facilities. We have also seen the FAA increasingly rely on its designees and organization designation authorizations (ODAs), in which a person or organization performs certifi cation work on behalf of the FAA. These designees and ODAs are overseen by FAA inspectors and certifi cation engineers, and paid by aircraft and original equipment (OEM) manufacturers, but according to the FAA, they “act as surrogates for the FAA in examining aircraft designs, production quality, and airworthiness.” According to the Government Accountability Offi ce, designees and ODAs perform more than 90 percent of the FAA’s certifi cation activities despite “serious concerns that designee oversight


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