EDITORIAL: Rochester airport has an enviable safety record

Yahoo

10 hours ago

Jun. 7—Most readers of this editorial will be familiar with the 1992 blockbuster film "A Few Good Men," starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson. (If you can't believe it's been 32 years since that movie hit the big screen, then you can't handle the truth.) Anyway, the film's male-centric title actually refers to a mid-'80s military recruiting campaign, in which the U.S. Marines Corps told the world, "We're looking for a few good men."
Perhaps the Federal Aviation Administration should reboot and update that ad campaign. Our nation's air traffic control system is looking for good people — and it needs more than just a few.
Nationwide, the pool of air traffic controllers system is short by about 3,500. And, based on current data from the FAA and staffing targets from something called the Collaborative Resource Workgroup (CRWG), the Rochester International Airport (RST) is one of just six airports nationwide that has less than 50% of needed controllers on staff. (The goal for Rochester is 23, and currently RST has 11.)
Is that ideal? Of course not. But should these numbers concern people who fly into and out of RST?
Not really.
We can't recall any reported near-misses at RST, let alone any actual collisions involving planes. Yes, a pilot walked away from a single-engine plane crash earlier this year, but the accident had nothing to do with air traffic control. The last fatality at RST happened in 1985, when three people died during a training flight on a Learjet. Again, this was not due to a problem or mistake in the control tower.
While we won't claim to have examined the records of every airport in the nation, we feel quite confident in saying that RST has an enviable safety record. We don't hesitate to use it or to have friends and family do so.
And it's not as if RST, city leaders, Mayo Clinic or any other local governing body is somehow responsible for any staffing problems at the airport. Controllers are trained and assigned by the FAA and its operational arm, the Air Traffic Organization, which considers staffing levels at airports across the nation as it strives to keep the skies safe. The pool of available talent is assigned where it is most needed, and right now, RST doesn't appear to be anywhere near a crisis.
We don't mean to downplay the very real shortage of controllers across the nation, but there does appear to be at least a slight disconnect between the current staffing levels and staffing goals that were set with the assistance of the air traffic controllers' union. In a perfect world, those targets would be achieved, but right now they appear unrealistic. We suspect that controllers at many smaller airports, including RST, would be thrilled if their airport reached 75% of the staffing goal.
Hitting even that less-ambitious mark won't be easy, because air traffic control is a tough field to enter. To be considered as a potential candidate, one must be a U.S. citizen less than 31 years old with essentially perfect hearing, vision and blood pressure. You'll face a battery of physical and psychological tests, and even if you clear those hurdles and are admitted to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, there's no guarantee you'll complete the training. It's a demanding program, and the failure/dropout rate ranges from 30-50%.
Those who graduate will enter one of the most stressful, thankless occupations in the world. Few professions require perfection on a daily basis, but such is the life of an air-traffic controller. There is no margin for error, no room for lapses in concentration. Some liken the job to a souped-up, insanely difficult remake of the classic video game Tetris — but in three dimensions, with human lives at stake with every move.
The reward? Salaries start around $60K. The average annual pay nationwide is about $100K, with top earners reaching $160K. Retirement is mandated at age 56, but many controllers leave the profession years before that date due to burnout and/or health concerns.
Given all that, we're surprised the staffing situation in airport towers isn't much, much worse. And here's the truth that everyone needs to grasp: The fix isn't simply to hire more controllers, or even to pay them more.
The recent, much-talked-about breakdowns at Newark Liberty International Airport should serve as a warning that the entire air travel system is beginning to crack under the strain of using obsolete, 40-year-old infrastructure to monitor and guide nearly 17 million flights in American airspace every year. The flight delays and cancellations at Newark didn't originate with staffing shortages in the traffic-control tower; rather, they were due to hardware failures that, without warning, left controllers working blind and unable to communicate with pilots.
Much to their credit, these controllers somehow managed to avoid disaster in the skies and on the runways. Not surprisingly, some employees took trauma leave after these incidents — which, of course, only added to bottlenecks on Newark's runways.
What happened in Newark will happen elsewhere. It's only a matter of time.
The latest cost estimate to modernize the national air-traffic control system is about $30 billion, and waiting won't bring the price down. Congress should authorize this spending ASAP, even if that means adding a new federal fee to the price of every domestic ticket sold in the U.S. With more than 800 million domestic passengers flying every year, an add-on of just $2 per seat would raise $16 billion in the next decade.
We're already paying at least $35 to check a bag and $14 for a fast-food "value meal" as we wait for our flights, so we believe most fliers wouldn't balk at the thought of spending an extra $2 to ensure that the dedicated, highly trained people working in the tower aren't using technology that, by today's standards, is roughly equivalent to a corkboard and push pins.