Air Controllers Still Overworked, GAO Says; Orange County, Long Beach Cited

Three years after it first described serious flaws in the nation’s air traffic control system, a congressional watchdog agency said Thursday that the country’s 14,400 air controllers are still seriously overworked, undertrained and demoralized.

And there apparently are particular problems among the controllers who manage air traffic in and out of airports in Orange County and Long Beach in California, according to testimony at a congressional hearing on the study.

El Toro Criticized

Conditions at the air traffic control facility at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which handles flights in Orange County, Long Beach and much of the rest of the busy air corridor between Los Angeles and San Diego, “are poor, and I would go so far as to say very poor,” said Randy Moore, who heads the local branch of the controllers’ union. Moore was among three air traffic controllers who testified at Thursday’s hearing.

The margin of safety in the nation’s skies remains “less than desirable,” although flying on commercial airliners is not unsafe, a consulting firm hired by the General Accounting Office concluded. The GAO is the congressional investigative agency that conducted the study at the request of the investigations and oversight subcommittee of the Public Works and Transportation Committee.

The GAO report “says, in effect, nothing has changed” since the agency released its last study in 1986, said Rep. Guy V. Molinari (R-N. Y.), the ranking minority member of the subcommittee, which conducted the hearing on the safety of the nation’s air control system.

Earlier this week, government safety officials blamed a near collision last February between two airliners over Orange County on the failure of the Federal Aviation Administration, which employs the controllers, to correct problems at the Coast Terminal Radar Approach Control facility, the formal name of the El Toro tracking station.

“I think they know the problem exists, but I think it might take some public pushing like this hearing to actually get them in gear,” Moore, in an interview, said of the FAA. “I hope they do something about it.”

However, Robert E. Whittington, the FAA’s acting administrator, told the subcommittee that his agency is already taking significant steps to increase the number of controllers, reduce their workload, curtail overtime, update equipment and improve training. Whittington said he believes that controllers’ morale is good.

“The safety afforded by our air traffic control system remains high,” Whittington said, citing statistics showing that near collisions dropped from 840 in 1986 to 712 in 1988 and that traffic controller errors fell from 1,202 in 1986 to 1,042 last year.

The GAO’s finding that serious problems remain was based on a survey of 5,098 controllers and air traffic supervisors. Responses were obtained from 80% of those to whom questionnaires were sent, a return rate that GAO officials described as remarkably high.

Handle Too Many Planes

The study found that:

--Sixty-five percent of the controllers said that they routinely handle too many airplanes during peak traffic periods. Supervisors reported that 38% of their radar controllers handle too much traffic.

--Nearly 60% of the controllers said that they typically work too long without a break. Although the FAA guidelines call for a break after every two hours in front of the radar screen, 87% of the controllers said they had exceeded that limit at least once in the last month.

--Although 43% of the controllers said they suffer from low morale, supervisors perceived controller morale as high.

--A majority of the most senior and experienced controllers, who are formally designated as full performance level controllers, rated as inadequate nearly half of the procedures used to train new controllers.

The figures are virtually unchanged from those presented in a 1986 report on a similar survey of controllers that was taken in 1985, the study said.

“We find that the report bears out many of our worst suspicions and fears,” R. Steve Bell, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn., the controllers’ union, testified. “I can say that the FAA has a tired and demoralized work force that is fed up with the empty promises that have been served up in the last eight years . . . .

“It all boils down to business as usual. And it is a very poor way of doing business.”

In reply to a question from Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-San Pedro), chairman of the full committee, the official who directed the research for the GAO said that the survey results gave him pause.

“It does give me some concern, not that the system is unsafe, but (about) what the FAA is willing to settle for as an acceptable level of safety.”

Since 1981, when President Ronald Reagan fired 11,400 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, the number of air traffic controllers has increased to only 14,437. That is about 1,800 fewer than the pre- strike total. In addition, there are now about 3,300 fewer senior controllers than before the strike, the study said.

But the figures may understate the problem because the volume of the nation’s air traffic has increased each year, the study noted.