At the end of July, 17 air traffic controllers are expected to hand in their headsets, leave their old workplace on Long Island and report to a new office in Philadelphia, as part of a plan to address a long-standing problem related to hiring enough controllers. to manage the skies around New York.
Despite strong incentives they have been offered to accept, workers, unwilling to uproot themselves and their families, are resisting the measure, and some powerful members of Congress are helping them fight back.
In a fiery letter sent to the Federal Aviation Administration last week, a group of New York lawmakers, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and majority leader, demanded that the agency abandon plans to force employee relocations. this summer.
The measure imposes undue hardship on those workers, lawmakers argued. The “forced reassignments” by the FAA, Schumer and his colleagues wrote, are “both confusing and outrageous.” Controllers say their family lives would be disrupted, citing new marriages, disabled children and elderly parents they care for.
The fact that the Senate’s most powerful lawmaker complained so loudly about a small group of workers underscores the power of the nerve center of the controllers in Westbury, New York, an intense workplace whose formidable responsibilities, high-stress environment and strong personalities inspired an article in a magazine. and the 1999 film “Pushing Tin.”
The anger of controllers and their supporters clashes with the FAA’s desperate effort to find and train enough employees willing to address the demands of ensuring the smooth and safe flow of aircraft in and out of New York airspace, its most complex. By all accounts.
Central New York has struggled for years with chronic vacancies, putting its recent staffing levels at some of the lowest in the country. The FAA hopes that moving some of the job responsibility out of New York to a more affordable place to live will make it easier to hire more controllers over time, leading to higher staffing levels and, with it, greater air safety and efficiency. .
But the agency’s plan also risks losing some of its most experienced controllers who are reluctant to move, which, perversely, could exacerbate staffing problems.
The relocations, scheduled for July 28, are necessary “to improve efficiency and ensure safety in this region,” FAA spokeswoman Bridgett Frey said in a statement.
The group targeted by the transfer manages the airspace around Newark Liberty International Airport, which the FAA says can be done from both Philadelphia and Long Island. This is because this group of controllers uses radar sights, rather than guiding planes from a runway tower overlooking takeoffs and landings.
FAA figures show that staffing shortages last year at the Long Island building affected 4 percent of the 541,136 takeoffs and landings that occurred at major New York airports last summer. The agency expects the summer flight season, which begins later this month, to be the busiest since 2010.
Air traffic controllers say they, too, fight with safety in mind. They say they need to be in the same room as their New York colleagues, as they are now, to quickly communicate with them in the event of a crisis.
“This is an extremely stressful job,” said Joe Segretto, the controller who is president of the local chapter of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association that represents central New York airspace. For controllers, he added, being forced by the FAA to move away from their spouses and children “is going to add enormous pressure.”
As moving day approaches, the struggle becomes greater. The FAA has already implemented a 10 percent reduction in flight volume in the New York area to address lower staffing levels at its New York Terminal Radar Approach Control building in Westbury, known internally like N90. But any additional staffing issues could mean there simply aren’t enough controllers to handle the increased volume expected for the summer, causing delays.
The fate of this handful of employees in a workforce of more than 14,000 has caught the attention of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, even as his workload is strained by the demands of addressing aircraft assembly problems at Boeing. investigate the cause of recent train derailments and lead the battle against what the Biden Administration says are “junk fees” charged by airlines.
“The complexity of the N90 is more complex than the entire airspaces of many countries,” Buttigieg said in an interview with The New York Times in December.
Given the low staffing levels at N90, he added, “we know there needs to be more attention there.” Only 59 percent of available controller positions in the building are filled, according to March FAA figures.
Last June, the FAA was reprimanded by the Department of Transportation, its parent agency, for doing too little to address a years-long shortage of controller staff. Days after those findings were published, United Airlines delayed and canceled flights affecting 150,000 passengers. Scott Kirby, United’s chief executive, blamed the FAA for a controller shortage that he said exacerbated a situation in which his pilots were already dealing with bad weather in the New York area.
Controllers working on N90, housed in a squat, windowless building in suburban Long Island, are responsible for supervising the early boarding and alighting of hundreds of thousands of flights at John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports each year, which equates to at least 60 per hour in and out of Newark alone on a typical day or night shift, according to FAA data. N90 is second in size to Southern California airspace, but is arguably a more critical cog in the overall system, affecting the punctuality and well-being of hundreds of thousands of passengers each day.
The FAA has struggled with a nationwide controller shortage since the pandemic, which forced pauses in training both at its Oklahoma City academy and at air traffic control centers across the United States. But the N90 staffing shortage has been particularly pressing.
Controller jobs are so demanding and specialized that they typically require years of experience to perform, including 18 to 24 months of hands-on N90 training after performing duties in less crowded locations. Westbury’s staffing shortage in recent years has meant that some controllers have earned nearly $400,000 a year due to extra pay, according to FAA documents reviewed by The New York Times. At $183,000, FAA chief Michael Whitaker earns much less.
Over the years, the agency has tried a variety of strategies to fill vacant positions at N90, including offering raises and bonuses and using new recruiting tactics. (Controllers say a hiring initiative targeting candidates without relevant experience, which some N90 controllers refer to as “off-the-street” hiring, was attempted without much success.)
The failure rate has remained stubbornly high. Only 32 percent of N90 trainees achieved certification as fully qualified, according to FAA statistics from March, a much lower rate than at comparable facilities. The Department of Transportation’s report last year showed that N90 had the fewest supervisors of any Terminal Radar Approach Control, or Tracon, building in the nation, with just eight of the 30 spaces authorized.
The FAA has been working to relocate some of the N90 controllers to Philadelphia since at least 2020, only to be stymied by both the controllers union and New York lawmakers.
Its most recent effort to negotiate a measure with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association began late last year. The two sides reached a deal in March, according to documents reviewed by The Times, with a package that included a 15 percent initial incentive bonus and a $75,000 payment for those who moved to Philadelphia permanently. But, lacking an adequate number of volunteers to make the Philadelphia transfer work, the FAA took a tougher stance about six weeks later, according to an April 29 memo reviewed by The Times: It notified more than a dozen of N90 controllers to be involuntarily reassigned.
At the union’s urging, Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, whose district includes N90, drafted the May 7 letter demanding that the FAA rescind his reassignments. In addition to Mr. Schumer, it was signed by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and four other members of Congress from the Long Island region and the surrounding area. Three of them were Republicans, including D’Esposito.
“There are people who actually have strong, solid jobs, and they move not because they want to, but because we tell them to,” D’Esposito said in an interview. “It’s not a good situation.”
Some controllers who do not move may be reassigned to new roles in N90. But getting a new position depends on proving to the FAA that a change would create undue hardship and require training for a new position for a year or more.
The FAA, which spent $36 million to renovate and upgrade the Philadelphia Tracon building, has recently tried again to make the relocation attractive. In the April 29 memo ordering the 17 personnel transfers, the agency increased its incentive bonuses to $100,000 for controllers who moved to Philadelphia, either temporarily or permanently.
However, Segretto, the president of the union chapter, and many of its members are unwavering.
“We are completely against it,” he said. “It’s forcing air traffic controllers to choose between their career and leaving their families, or quitting their job.”
Mark Walker contributed reporting from Washington.