The Federal Aviation Administration has released an updated plan to hire nearly 1,400 new air traffic controllers this year, a net increase of 189 controllers over 2006 hiring levels.
The agency said the plan provides a range of authorized controller staffing numbers for 314 facilities across the country, giving it greater flexibility to match the number of controllers with traffic volume and workload.
In fiscal 2006, FAA hired 1,116 new controllers, increasing the total number of controllers to 14,618. It said it expects to hire and train over 15,000 controllers over the next ten years as more controllers become eligible for retirement.
FAA said in developing individual staffing ranges, it considered past performance, the performance of similar staffing standards, and recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences, as well as input from field managers, overtime trends, time-on position data and expected retirements.
The president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, Patrick Forrey, told a Senate subcommittee recently that a labor contract is needed with controllers — not the "imposed" work conditions that are currently in place — in order to slow the tide of retirements.
