FAA: Altered Records Just ‘Mistakes’

Altered work records affecting 446 fired Chicago-area air traffic controllers were innocent mistakes, Federal Aviation Administration officials told a House panel today.

Robert Miller, assistant manager of the Chicago Air Route Traffic Control Center, acknowledged that the work records erroneously were changed to show vacationing air traffic controllers as absent without leave during a 1981 strike.

“In hindsight, it is readily apparent that mistakes were made,” Miller said in testimony before the Public Works and Transportation oversight subcommittee.

“We were faced with a tremendous workload,” he said. “Despite our best efforts to do everything correctly, we did not.”

Hearings on Rights

The subcommittee is holding hearings to determine if the rights of 446 Chicago controllers were violated when they were dismissed after an illegal August, 1981, strike by the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization.

In all, 11,400 controllers were fired on President Reagan’s orders, but the subcommittee said a disproportionately high number were dismissed at the center near Aurora, Ill.

Lawyers for 163 former Chicago controllers contend that the FAA launched a records-tampering scheme to justify the dismissals when it otherwise could not prove their clients took part in the strike.

In a three-page letter to the subcommittee, FAA Administrator Donald D. Engen conceded that daily work records should not have been altered.

“We would have preferred that greater attention had been focused on maintaining current and correctly annotated sign-in logs,” Engen wrote. “We also do not believe that records should subsequently have been changed by our personnel.”

Changes Called Normal

But Miller said such changes remain a normal occurrence.

The former chief of the center, George H. Gunter, said he made the post-strike decision as to who should be fired after reviewing daily logs and oral testimony from controllers notified of their pending dismissals.

He said several controllers were allowed to keep their jobs after his reviews.

“It seems to me that a lot of corners were being cut, that established policies were not being met,” said Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose). “The fix was in, and you were marching to that drummer.”

“Mistakes were made in this process,” Gunter acknowledged.