Funds Sought for 955 Additional Air Controllers

The Transportation Department asked for more money Wednesday for the Federal Aviation Administration so 955 additional air traffic controllers, supervisors and traffic managers can be hired to meet traffic growth next year.

Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole told Congress she wanted to divert $51.5 million from other department accounts in the 1988 fiscal year budget to strengthen the controller work force by hiring additional personnel beginning in October.

She acknowledged that the new controllers likely will not be in a position to direct planes until late 1988, but said because it takes nearly a year to train a controller “it is imperative . . . that we put additional resources into the pipeline starting early this fall.”

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate transportation appropriations subcommittee, called the sudden request for more controllers evidence “of the department’s poor management and poor planning” involving air traffic control needs.

The department said the FAA will use some of the new personnel to expand its staff of “traffic managers,” whose duties are to monitor the broader picture of air traffic flow and keep airspace sectors from becoming overcrowded. The expansion also includes additional first-line supervisors to look over the shoulders of controllers.

The new plans to expand the controller work force, which critics have charged is dangerously below needed levels, will have little impact on the FAA’s handling of aircraft during the upcoming busy summer travel season.

FAA officials have insisted that current controller levels are adequate to do the job, although the National Transportation Safety Board urged last month that flights be curtailed during busy travel periods so controllers will not become overburdened.

Dole said in a letter to Lautenberg and Rep. William Lehman (D-Fla.), chairman of the House transportation appropriations subcommittee, that the FAA plans to hire an additional 580 controllers and 375 other traffic control personnel including supervisors and traffic managers.

The decision was made, she said, after a “reassessment of air traffic control resources and anticipated demand” that showed likely air traffic growth for 1988 of between 5% and 6%, about double the previous forecast.

The FAA has already been adding about 40 controllers a month in an effort to boost its controller force to about 15,200 by September of this year. In announcing that expansion in 1985, Dole said sharply increased air traffic necessitated the move.

The additional expansion announced Wednesday will bring the air traffic control force close to the 16,400 level that existed before a walkout by controllers in 1981. Nearly all of those controllers were fired by President Reagan.