El Toro Short of Controllers; Staff Unhappy

A severe staff shortage has left a Southland air traffic control facility in El Toro operating with two-thirds of its authorized number of fully qualified controllers and has forced disgruntled staffers to work six-day weeks, Federal Aviation Administration officials said Thursday.

Meanwhile, the use of overtime at the El Toro facility has increased tenfold--from 200 hours during the three months ended Dec. 31, 1985, to an estimated 2,100 hours for the quarter ended Sept. 1--the highest in the four-state Western Pacific region, FAA officials said. The region covers facilities in California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii and the Pacific Ocean.

“I would have to say that the controllers here take it as a definite hardship, and it’s something I’m trying to get out of as fast as possible,” said Marion Davis, manager of the FAA’s Coast TRACON (Terminal Radar Approach Control) facility, located at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

However, Davis stressed that the staff shortage--caused mainly by recent resignations--does not pose an immediate threat to air safety.

“It’s an undesirable situation from an employee’s point of view, to be sure,” Davis said, “but I don’t think working the overtime causes a safety problem. It’s more of a personal inconvenience.”

The issue of controllers’ workloads surfaced Wednesday when National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the Los Angeles International Airport controller who guided Aeromexico Flight 498 before Sunday’s crash in Cerritos was doing two jobs simultaneously. While remaining responsible for monitoring radar echoes on his own radar screen, the controller was also “handing off” or formally transferring aircraft from one controller’s sector to another.

However, such double duty is not unusual during periods of light air traffic, officials said.

Davis said Coast TRACON is authorized to have 36 “full performance level” controllers, who are fully trained and experienced to perform all air controller tasks. But, Davis said, Coast TRACON currently has only 19 so-called FPLs, plus six partially qualified controllers, three of whom are on loan from other FAA facilities.

Davis said the staff shortage is due mostly to five abrupt resignations, including two controllers who took jobs as airline pilots. He said it takes up to 14 months to train a new controller, and he has eight trainees who should be ready within nine to 10 months.

“That should take care of a lot of our problem,” Davis said.

Flights Delayed

A Coast TRACON supervisor, Fred Mauck, said Thursday that he and his co-workers are routinely delaying aircraft from entering the coastal area in order to keep planes separated from one another. This technique is known as “flow control,” Mauck said.

“We’ve been backing up planes all the way to the East Coast so that we can get a grip on things,” Mauck said.

Pilots sometimes are told to slow down en route to Southern California, or even to delay their departures from points east, so that they will arrive over the basin at greater intervals, Mauck said.

“Orange and Los Angeles counties basically get air traffic from all directions, 360 degrees around the compass, so there’s a big (traffic) problem,” Mauck said.

“I would say that the controllers here feel they are having to work overtime against their will,” Mauck added.

Coast TRACON controllers, who watch a 3,000-square-mile area, utilize computer-enhanced radar images to guide pilots through the Los Angeles-Orange County basin until airport tower controllers take over during final approach.