Air traffic control: child's play
The US FAA is looking into reports of a child directing air traffic at New York's JFK airport
The New York air traffic system is the busiest air system in the United States, and the second busiest in the world, with more than 107 million passengers each year; some 5,000 flights per day arrive in and depart out of the six major airports in the New York City metropolitan area; the Federal Aviation Administration says 270 air traffic controllers are needed for the New York area, but the actual number of fully trained and certified air traffic controllers has never risen above 211; that number has now dropped to 158.
Staffing of qualified air traffic controllers at the New York-based Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility — which is responsible for guiding 5,000 flights per day into and out of the six major airports in the New York City metropolitan area — has reached dangerously low levels. The current situation is putting the safety of airline passengers, as well as residents living in the densely populated areas surrounding the airports, in jeopardy.
According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) authorized raising the number of air traffic controllers at the New York TRACON facility to 270, but the actual number of fully trained and certified air traffic controllers has never risen above 211. That number has now dropped to 158 — the lowest staffing level since the controllers' strike took place in 1981.
"A normal work shift," explains Dean Iacopelli, spokesman for NATCA, "requires at least 60 controllers to be working, and that is with no one out sick or on vacation." Iacopelli says that the current situation is a dangerously low level of staffing, for one of the busiest air traffic control centers in the world.
