…and rightfully so.

The FAA has put the food on my table and the clothing on my back for essentially my entire life. My dad was an air traffic controller, a supervisor, and a manager in the FAA for my entire childhood. I was on my own (ie, not in college sponging off my folks) for about two years before I got hired by the FAA myself, where I’ve worked ever since.

I used to be as proud as could be to have the job of air traffic controller and to work for the FAA. In the agency’s training academy in Oklahoma City, on the walls there were dozens of pictures of people from all the nations on the globe; they’d come to America, to the FAA’s academy, to learn as much as they could from the leader in aviation safety.

Now? I’m still proud to be a controller; there’s only 15,000 14,500 13,000 somewhere around 11,000 fully certified air traffic controllers in the entire United States. (That number keeps dwindling; thanks to FAA policies journeymen controllers are retiring in droves.)

But I’m as embarrassed as could be to work for the FAA. One thing about the agency; our overall leadership has now landed us on The Daily Show, and we’re mocked by one of the best.

Here’s a post that I wrote for another blog I contribute to. It’ll be up there in a day or three, but readers here get an early preview.

Okay. Here’s a perfect example of how nutty the FAA is.

The agency is facing a staffing shortage in nearly every single ATC facility in the country. There’s not a large facility anywhere that doesn’t need to hire trainees- in fact, we needed to hire a big bunch of trainees a couple of years ago and are now desperately behind, but that’s beside the point of this post.

There’s also quite a few CTI program graduates who, despite the agency’s big-time bait-and-switch job, are still wanting to come to work as air traffic controllers for the FAA.

One is a guy, “JT”, who previously ran into some FAA madness when he was offered a job at Atlanta Tracon, then found another just-hired person “R” who was willing to swap facilities with him. R wanted to be in Atlanta, JT wanted to be in New York. Neither of them had even started training in Oklahoma City yet, so it was simply a matter of some paperwork; change R’s to say “going to Atlanta” and put him in JT’s class slot, change JT’s to say “going to New York” and put him in R’s class slot, bang, you’re done.

Didn’t happen. JT wound up getting (this is good) a BILL from the FAA for $65.17, supposedly for overpayment of salary. The problem is that he never actually worked for the FAA; they nixed his swap, nixed him going to Atlanta or Oklahoma City altogether, and just put him back onto the list of eligible people to get hired. But some paperwork had gone through indicating he was an employee, and then terminated; some payroll thing had gone through for a 65 dollar deduction, but since he never actually worked for the FAA they couldn’t withhold it from his pay, so they sent him a bill.

Pretty neat trick. Not only could the agency not handle a simple swap between two guys, but they wind up billing someone for never working for the FAA.

Fastforward. JT is still on the list, but his pre-employement drug test is about to expire. (The testing is only good for a certain length of time, then you have to re-test.) The FAA specialist called him up and said “it’s time to renew your drug test and when it’s done, we’re going to offer you a job and an OKC training date.” He asked where the job offer is and the specialist said “Atlanta Tracon.”

JT is dead-set on going to New York or New Jersey, something in the bigger tri-state area. Why? He’s married. He’s got a father with a terminal illness. He and his wife bought a house. He’s already got a job and it pays more than the 9 bucks an hour he’d make during his stint in OKC; in fact, he makes more than he’d make in his first year on the job as an air traffic controller.

In short, the guy has decided that while he still wants to be a controller, he only wants to do it where he’s at.

Now, this is perfectly logical. It shouldn’t be a problem in ANY way; the FAA has literally a half-dozen large facilities within a reasonable commuting distance of his present home, and every single one of them has job openings. Here’s New York Tracon’s. Here’s a listing for 5 facilities that would all work, and note that three of them say they have “many” openings.

Why can’t the FAA hire this guy to work where he wants to work? Particularly when there ARE people who want to go work in Atlanta Tracon?

It’s utterly insane. He’s going to refuse. He’s trying to decide if he should take the drug test anyway, then tell them “look, it’s one of these facilities or I’m not taking the job, period” or if he should simply skip taking the test since it’ll just waste the agency’s time and money, not to mention his own.

The FAA’s managers and supervisors talk about how they want to “capture the hearts and minds” of the new hires, instead of letting them be influenced by NATCA.

Hey, FAA managers and supervisors? It’s too late. Our agency’s insanity and incompetent hiring procedures have these folks angry at the FAA before they even work for the agency.

And this has nothing to do with NATCA, nothing to do with people like me writing blogs that point out how stupid the FAA is sometimes, nothing to do with the contract negotiations. It’s not political and it’s not someone intentionally subverting the process.

It’s just insane, and it’s 100% the agency’s fault. In today’s day and age there is absolutely zero excuse for this to happen.

An ex-girlfriend of mine works in the HR field. She used to work for Verizon Wireless, and she did hiring and recruiting. She did multiple interviews, drug tests, and pre-employement screening to hire someone to sell cell phones in retail stores.

To freaking sell cellular phones. And what’s more, they managed to hire people into store locations where they wanted to work, and they managed to get it done within a week or two of the store manager informing the HR department that they needed some people for staffing.

It’s utterly pathetic that a kid hired to hawk cell phones can get hired more effectively, more quickly, and wind up with a better image of his new employer than someone getting hired to safeguard the lives of millions of travelers and billions of dollars worth of airplanes in his career.

It’s insane, and there is nobody to blame for this other than the FAA Administrator and the bigwigs in the FAA.

And for those of you thinking about coming to work for the FAA… just so you know… those people in charge totally do not care. These kinds of things have been pointed out to them countless times, and they never do anything about it. They do not care about you and they never will, because if they were going to, they would already.

I hate to sound like a whiner when it comes to my job. I make a pretty dang good sum of money for my job, air traffic control. I don’t apologize for it or feel guilty for it; it’s a highly technical skill that takes years to learn to do well, only a tiny percentage of those who started out trying to get the job are able to wind up doing it, and it’s a job where error can result in hundreds of deaths and millions of dollars in property damage.

At the same time, I recognize that there’s probably a lot of people who could do it, that it’s a good physical environment to work in most of the time compared with jobs that are outside, and other than the things that stress can do to your body or the danger to your mental condition, it’s a pretty safe job.

So all in all, it’s not a bad job.

But man, I hate my employer right now. The actual job function? It’s great. Plugging in, talking to airplanes, moving them around, keeping them safe and getting as many in as efficiently as possible… there’s a weird sense of satisfaction and happiness to jamming your way through a big traffic rush that can really only be understood by another controller.

Other jobs have similar satisfactions, I’m sure.

I hate the FAA, though. I wrote a while back about how the FAA these days only follows their own rules when it suits them, and the manager types just do whatever they darned well please and ignore the rules if they don’t feel like following them.

I had filed a grievance, two of them actually, that detailed my objections to what they did. The grievances were some of the best writing I’ve done in a long, long time. I cited references and pointed out that they were clearly ignoring their own orders. I had an oral presentation where I got to sit down and present my grievances to the facility manager and assistant manager (also known, to those of us who talk “old school FAA”, as the chief and the deputy).

Their response is back, and it’s pathetic. If I were them I’d be embarrassed to show up to work, because they lied. Flat-out lied.

The issue was a pilot complaint about the services that I provided to him. Such complaints are supposed to be handled by our QA department (who does a Quality Assurance Review, or “QAR”) in as quick a manner as possible. Instead, this complaint was handled by the HR department and took months.

Their response claims that the QA office was indeed who handled the response, yet there is no record of a QAR ever having been done. The QAR form has never been filled out. The FAA’s orders on the subject say that the results of the QAR should be communicated to the employee as soon as possible, preferably within 24 hours; I didn’t hear anything new about it for weeks. If deficiencies are found, they are supposed to retrain the employee, not punish them; I got a letter of warning as a conduct issue instead of training for a performance issue.

In short, they didn’t do what they’re supposed to do, they didn’t document the things they DID do the way they’re supposed to, and when this was all pointed out to them, they lied about it.

My bosses are, in short, liars. It goes all the way up the food chain, unfortunately; if it were just my local bosses, I could either go above their heads in the grievance process, or I could just wait ‘em out (I’ve had something like 10 or 12 different immediate supervisors in 16 years working here, over 10 facility managers… none of these guys can hold a job) and when the next one comes in, hope they’re better.

It’s a shame, because they’re seemingly very nice, reasonable people. They are, unfortunately, being made into liars by their bosses, and their bosses’s bosses, and so forth right up the line. My immediate bosses have to sign a letter that is full of lies, and it’s really unfortunate. Can you imagine being in a position where you’re forced to do that?

It disgusts me that the FAA has fallen this far. And I’m disappointed that my local bosses don’t have the guts, or the ability, to stand up for what’s right and tell their bosses “no, you’re wrong on this, and the written documentation says so”.

The agency claims that it’s trying to build good, strong “leaders” as supervisors and managers, but the people in charge mistake submission in their subordinates as being true “leadership”. Then they wonder why things keep getting screwed up, because nobody below them has the ability or the guts or whatever to tell the emperor that he’s naked.

Sigh. I don’t mind being told “NO”, as long as it’s backed up by actual evidence. The letter they sent me basically says “we are saying ‘no’ because it’s our right, not because of any written guidance or orders.”

Again, I’m conflicted about my job. The JOB, working airplanes, gobs of fun. Interesting. Challenging, scary, rewarding.

My employer… man, oh man.

John Carr is a tremendous guy. He was the President of my union, NATCA, for six years- and we’re sorely missing him now. The voters unfortunately bounced him out of office last year in an election in favor of Pat Forrey (who is also a tremendous guy, and a solid NATCA President… but given that choice, and it’s nothing personal towards Pat, but I’ll take John Carr every time and twice on Sunday.)

John had a blog for the last year or so of his Presidency called The Main Bang. In it, he told stories- stories of the FAA leadership’s incompetence, of technology projects being mismanaged, of supervisors and managers firing people for no good reason at all.

When John lost his election, he shut down the Bang right away. He’s all class and didn’t want to distract from, or harm, Pat’s mission as President. John was willing to accept the verdict of the NATCA voters and believed that it was time to power down and let Pat come in and start on fresh ground, which he did.

John has been kicking around restarting The Main Bang for some time. It was technically NATCA’s, but they let the registration and ownership lapse, so John snagged it. He’s now begun posting again, which is good news for those who like Truth and Justice and bad news for those who’ll scurry like cockroaches running from the light.

He immediately gets re-listed in my suggested blogs links, and I urge you to go to The Main Bang and read some of his old posts if you haven’t ever read him. The stories he tells are frightening when you consider that they’re about air traffic control, but they’re no great surprise to those of us working for the FAA.

I don’t post here about the FAA very often anymore. I’m on another blog that someone started a while back called The FAA Follies. I fear that blog will now die an early death, because the stories we tell there (there’s me and one other main author) are the same kinds of things that John will likely write about. In fact, the owner of the Follies invited John to write on that site and gave him free rein to post whatever he wanted, but John declined.

See, John has class, and one of the things he believes in is signing all your posts. My posts here are all mine; if/when I post elsewhere, I put my name on it as well. I understand why people (like the owner and some of the other authors on the Follies) post anonymously; sometimes when you tell the Truth, or even the truth as you see it, people are violently upset and disturbed.

When those people have power over you, they’ll flex it; their beliefs in free speech only matter as long as it’s not THEM that is being criticized. It’s a shame, but it’s human nature. I’ve been investigated by the FAA Legal department for posts here so I know some of that oppression myself.

John, who’s now retired from the FAA, has the ability to say whatever he wants. Good for him. NATCA, the FAA, and indeed the nation needs someone like him who can really bring it.

Welcome back, John. And no, I don’t understand trackbacks either, not exactly… but they’re good.