Monster Thunderstorms in Kansas

The case against privatizing Air Traffic Control in the US

Should government be able to privatize functions of agencies that are considered an essential service? Privatization has been en vogue for quite some time now with everything from Social Security to incarcerating inmates suggested as a method to shrink the size of government, lowering the tax burden on businesses and high net worth individuals. Whenever politicians gather and plan budgets, they work from the premise that all government is bad, providing nothing that private enterprise/free market cannot do better.  My contention is government is not a business and as such, should not be run like one. Government exists for the good of every citizen and the idea of winners and losers, profit and loss, surpluses and balanced budgets while desirous in a business have no place in the operating of our democracy.

The Trump administration recently launched “Infrastructure Week” attempting to steer a series of programs through congress with the intent of getting Americans back to work- rebuilding what the President described as our nation’s “third world infrastructure” (@CNNPolitics “President Trump compares the US infrastructure to that of a ‘third-world country’" Twitter,  15 August 2017  https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/897590249928437760) The first program proposed was privatizing Air Traffic Control, wresting the system from control of the Federal Aviation Administration division of the Department of Transportation.  This has been proffered a number of times starting with the Reagan administration and has been revisited by every administration since.

Air Transportation contributes 5.1% to the US gross domestic product moving 2,586,582 domestic/international passengers a year on 26,527 average daily scheduled flights.  Close to 40 billion pounds of freight were carried in 2016 and the annual earnings in aviation jobs runs $446.8 billion

(“Air Traffic By the Numbers” Federal Aviation Administration https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/ Accessed 2 September 2017)

            Many of the complaints about the FAA and their stewardship of Air Traffic control stem from the way the government currently funds the agency. The FAA has been subject to the budget/spending cap tug of war that has been occurring over the past several years. Since sequestration starting in 2013 the agencies budget has remained flat receiving funding from a series of short term spending bills rather than a proper budget. Keeping up an ever-expanding amount of air traffic, implementing next generation air traffic control technologies, serving as the nations aviation regulator by both codifying the rules and ensuring their compliance, are all agency functions. These essential services require a stable budget with regular moderate increases to accommodate an ever-expanding purview. (“Privatizing Air Traffic Control” Aerospace America Debra Werner June 2017 https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/privatizing-air-traffic-control/ Retrieved 2 September 2017)  This is a typical strategy used often by congress, creating situations where they defund an essential service then announce to the nation how the agency providing the service is going under and needs to be disbanded, broken up and sold to the private sector.

With all that at stake I believe that privatizing Air Traffic Control is a bad idea. Now my free market friends will tell me that the market and competition will cull the overly expensive and inefficient from the field and provide better service than any government entity, but in this case the proposal is to give control of the nation's air traffic to a private non profit corporation, founded just for this purpose. The fallacy of the free market/competition argument is the plan doesn't create multiple companies to run ATC, who will then compete for and win our business. Rather it creates just one, who will then be awarded the best system globally which handles more traffic safely than any other country in the world. 

Under HR2997 the house bill that removes ATC from the FAA, the non-profit will have a board of directors composed of 13 members, with representation from each of the stakeholders in aviation. The airlines and their employee unions will have four seats on the board. Hub airports and the Air Traffic Control unions will also be equally represented with General Aviation, or the private sector, receiving just two seats. Many have concerns that the airlines, their labor unions, the ATC unions and hub airports whose interests are closely aligned will band together effectively ceding the nations air traffic control system to the airlines. All of the big three airlines have undergone reorganization via bankruptcy several times over the past few decades, while ATC has shouldered its duties through boom or bust.  (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association “ATC Privatization Pitfalls Point By Point” 12 July 2017 Joe Kilda Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2017/july/12/get-the-facts-about-atc-privatization)

We've gone down this privatization road before, just a short time ago with the FAA spinning off the Flight Service Stations to a private contractor. We were promised that the acquisition of these services by one of the country's leading defense contractors (Lockheed Martin) would greatly improve the service, as the company would then modernize the product, bringing to bear all of the conveyances of recent technology and delivery methods that the stodgy old federal government could only dream about.  One of the first things they accomplished was the closing and consolidation of these government weather stations and reporting service facilities into just a few, located on either side of the continent. The employees were offered continued employment but naturally they would have to move to these new locations to keep their jobs 

The change was rolled out in 2007 just before Airventure Oshkosh, the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual convention and the world’s largest gathering of aviators in Wisconsin each year. Regulars like myself (I have attended sixteen of the past seventeen years) witnessed the rollout in person as Lockheed Martin personnel staffed the former FAA FSS offices and the trailers on the show grounds, and in true trade-show fashion their facilities were replete with swag emblazoned with their logo. Small bottles of hand sanitizer, and sun block lip balms were all the rage as you waited for your briefing usually given by a recently ex-federal employee who had neither the seniority to retire, nor deep enough roots to keep them from relocating to D.C./Virginia or the Arizona locations of the newly private enterprise. 

What was telling to me was the briefers were using the same old government web sites and government collected data that I used to formulate my own picture of the weather. What went missing was the local resident's perspective of the weather, the picture and trends, nay insight, which made the service an invaluable safety component of the preflight process for those of us lacking a dispatch department to determine our routes around inclement weather. Soon thereafter with the budget sequestration their presence at the show ended bringing to light that the service wasn't donated and they weren't volunteers.

I stopped using them regularly after the color-coded terrorism alert system came online. This had telephone preflight weather briefers more concerned about whether I would pledge I had first received and then follow the prerecorded security Notices to Airmen (NOTAMS) announced prior to even receiving a briefing.  As technology advanced I started receiving my briefings electronically via a mélange of different internet sources and when I started flying for a regional airline we had dispatchers who can look at the weather and give advice as to which way to turn. Similarly to the way Automated Teller Machines and Self Checkout lines at the grocery stores kept you from dealing with the surly bank teller or the “cannot make change without the register telling me what to give you” cashier, the poor performance of the Lockheed Martin personnel drove most of the flying population to use a source other than the privatized entity. This didn’t change their contract however and they continued to serve a diminishing population of pilots while receiving their agreed on rates.    

Beyond the cost reduction that made the private entity product immensely profitable, the effort yielded no tangible results except eliminating a workforce of middle class union employees- always a priority to many of our congressional members.  The cost to the government remained the same as services declined and Lockheed received a multi-year contract extension after which they sold the business to another corporation who has degraded the services even further as they provide “return on the shareholder’s equity”

The difference between government agencies and private corporations is that corporation’s by nature are sociopathic. A corporation’s sole purpose in the world is to enrich the shareholder- everything else is secondary. There isn’t anything wrong with this behavior, it is how many successful businesses operate, but government cannot, existing to service the entirety of its constituency.  Essentially when it comes to FAA/ATC, you can get your weather information from a multitude of places -but you can't get Air Traffic Control from anyone but ATC. Let's not make the same mistake in privatization by giving a national asset away to be run like a business.

Volunteering

While I am not privy to what motivates others to volunteer, there are a number of reasons I will contribute my time to an organization or cause.  Typically my reasons are threefold.  The first is a belief in the organization’s core values. I will volunteer to help raise awareness of their cause, helping to further their goals. Secondly, I like to volunteer as a method of giving back to a community, which has directly impacted or benefitted my life.  Lastly I have volunteered as an in-kind donation when I have lacked the funds to monetarily support the cause.

I routinely volunteer at aviation conventions for industry advocacy organizations.  Among others I am presently a member of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), Experimental Aircraft Organization (EAA), Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP). I have volunteered my time for these organizations at one time or another.

Founded in 1976, the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals encourages minorities to pursue aviation and aerospace careers. I have donated time to OBAP because they bring awareness of aviation as a career choice to inner city youth that prior to their introduction to the association may have not been considered.  OBAP offers summer camps for fourteen to eighteen year olds called ACE academies. Trips are organized which bring bus loads of students to United, JetBlue and Delta facilities in Chicago, New York, Orlando and Atlanta where they are introduced to dispatchers, pilots, mechanics, schedulers, and flight attendants. Tours though maintenance hangars and aircraft all culminate with a full motion aircraft simulator ride where they receive a lesson in operating a transport category jet aircraft. OBAP members presently employed by these contributing companies arrange all this, most of who will state that having someone introduce them to aviation as a youth helped drive them towards their career choice.  High school students are offered opportunities to compete for training scholarships to help defray the costs of certification.  I have volunteered at two of their conventions in Las Vegas and Chicago registering attendees and assisting with the administration of the events.

The Experimental Aircraft Organization was founded in 1953 out of the interest of amateur aircraft kit builders. Since then, the association has morphed into an amalgamation of all manners of aviation interests. Vintage, production, kit built, and aerobatic aircraft all have chapters within the EAA. Their annual convention is called Airventure Oshkosh and for one week a year Wittman Regional Airport becomes the busiest airport in the world.  Volunteering for the EAA at their “learn to fly discovery center” is essentially selling learning to fly to an interested audience at the world largest aviation event held in Wisconsin. As a licensed flight instructor, I among dozens of others, staff a sixteen hundred square foot tent answering questions about what is required to obtain a pilot certificate. We’re there to put a face on general aviation and let the nonflying public know that the little airport in their hometown is staffed with people similar to ourselves, who are approachable and would be very happy to introduce them to an activity that has changed our lives measurably.

My “In Kind donation” volunteering is usually for the AOPA where I have been a member since 1986.  The Aircraft Owners and Pilot Association is a Washington DC based organization that was founded in 1939 to represent the owners and operators of light aircraft in front of our national government. Essentially a lobbying entity, with an air safety foundation, their mission is to support “your freedom to fly”. When I owned a flight school I donated the use of one of our full motion flight simulators to their annual Aviation Summit in Hartford Connecticut. A three-day event we closed our business for a week while the simulator manufacturer packaged up our box and shipped it to the convention center. My wife and I worked the show for three days and we gave out thirty-six hours of simulator rides in six-minute intervals.  As I did not posses the financial wherewithal to contribute in a substantial matter, volunteering the assets of my business and services of my wife and myself was more than an adequate method of donating to the association.

There are many different ways to contribute to causes in our community, and the reasons people choose to validate their volunteerism are as varied as those who participate. I hope the aforementioned examples have detailed my motivation, providing a better understanding of just one person’s charitable giving.

Some Pictures of my visit to Washington National Airport

Envoy CRJ Short Final Rwy 19 DCA

Just prior to touchdown Envoy CRJ

Touchdown Smoke

Airbus Touchdown

Spoilers Deployed on Rollout

Washington National River Visual 19

FTD Session 4. Houston Training Center November 2013

“Seannnn…. Get in the Game! You really have no idea what is going on do you Se-aann?, the airplane is burning, you  and 52 other people are going to die here today cause you can’t remember what you’re supposed to be doing. Goddammit get in the game” he was screaming at me. Six inches from my ear, nattily dressed, pleasant cologne and his minty fresh breath, screaming at me. At that point it took every ounce of self restraint to keep from telling him to take his nonpaying job and stick it right up his ass, but I had already invested six weeks into this program and didn’t want to go home empty handed. Besides I really wasn’t sure how I would get home or what I would do for a living if I quit now.

It was FTD session 4 at the training center. The FTD or flight training device is an actual cockpit of an Embraer 145 that had been totaled during a runway mishap a few years earlier and the company had engaged CAE to develop it into a procedures trainer. Essentially they took the flight deck off of the airplane, replaced the windshields with frosted Plexiglas and built interfaces between the switches and controls that simulated a real airplane. All you couldn’t do is taxi or land it. They had two of them in small data centers at the training center with a whole host of computers sitting around them on raised floors. You climbed an industrial metal platform to access it and there was room for the crew flying, the instructor/operator and another crew who got to witness their classmates being tortured in the device.

Session 4 was emergency drills and was part of the buildup to simulator training.  It wasn’t a training gate so the session was instructional in nature not a measuring event, meaning it was non jeopardy. The instructor was a guy about my age who showed up late because of traffic commuting into work. Travis and I were initially relieved that he was late as it gave me more time to review. And frankly, I really needed the review.

Captain Johnny Rocket met us in the employee cafeteria. He showed up in a pair of pressed black slacks a professionally laundered starched white shirt open three buttons from the top and a light grey patterned silk sport coat and expensive polished tan loafers.  Wearing a watch the size of a golf ball, he apologized for his tardiness, got himself a diet coke and led us into one of the briefing rooms. Introductions led the discussions with Captain Rocket telling us about his career at the airline, his prior work as a police officer and military service. He liked what he heard from Travis a fellow southerner but largely due to his prior experience flying a Dash 8 for Piedmont. He didn’t seem to know what to make of me. A fifty three year old New Yorker dressed similarly to him, launching a new career into a field mostly populated with guys in their mid twenties and early thirties.

After six weeks of introductions I had my elevator pitch about my experience fairly well honed so after the pleasantries we launched into the briefing of what we were intending to accomplish over the next three hours.

We talked about what was going to happen,  which built on what we had been working on to date. The first part was review and reinforcement. We would have to work through all of the on the ground flows from the “hello and happy to meet you” safety inspection, followed by the power up, receiving flow and checklist, the before start flow and before start/pushback checklist. Engine start would follow where we would then perform the after start flow and checklist. Then we would do the taxi checklist, which could be either a two engine taxi or a single engine taxi. If it was a single engine taxi we would have to perform a delayed engine start flow and taxi checklist, which at this point in my training could have been a condition for meltdown. We would have to be ready for takeoff within 45 minutes from sitting down with the airplane configured correctly and ready for take off.

A takeoff climb out and vectors around for an ILS approach would be next and we’d do this a couple of times then he would introduce the emergencies which was the meat of the lesson. The primary procedure we were to experience was smoke in the cockpit from some failure induced by the instructor.  We had spent the past six weeks reviewing the memory and immediate action items so we were quizzed on them. Today we were going to expand on them by experiencing them in the cockpit of the trainer, going thru the procedures we had only memorized actually touching and actuating the knobs dials and switches as we worked through the Quick Reference Handbook donning the oxygen masks, smoke goggles in the process.

Travis volunteered to go first, so I would have the opportunity to see where my knowledge was thin, learning from my partner a current 121 pilot. The briefing ended after an hour and we adjourned to the FTD room and got a fifteen-minute break. I put my gear in the left seat and called Judy and she wished me luck and did her best supporting spouse routine. After six weeks of tolerating me living in a hotel away from her and the home, her encouragement was about as polished as my experience elevator pitch. We squared our gear in the FTD and set about ‘building our nests’ to try to get a jump on the tasks soon to be encountered.

The instructors usually had the prior crews leave us “Easter Eggs” to find. This was where they would put the switches and knobs in inappropriate positions pulling circuit breakers and the like to verify that we were actually going through our flows and setting things up as required, so getting there early was imperative. Travis set about doing his thing while I watched trying to remember everything we had been studying up to that point and getting nervous as hell. 

Captain Rocket was talking to someone on his cell phone and hearing the one side of it I could tell we were a lot alike by the things he was saying. He talked about where he was going to meet this person after he got off from work, how the food and drinks were good and all about how gorgeous the friendly barmaid who served them is. For some reason this relieved me as I thought about his life and how he knew it would continue in three hours with a drink and some food flirting with pretty women, three of my favorite things to do. 

In contrast, my mindset was nothing like that. Like a deer in the headlights,  I was behind the eight ball and at that point all I was concerned with was getting thru this session still employed.

“I can only piss on the fire that’s closest to me” was my mantra up till this point in the program and I wasn’t deviating from it today.

Jeremy B52 had said that to me one night over a few beers, and it stuck. He was from Shreveport LA married with a three year old son. A B52 commander for the Airforce Reserve he had a job with the squadron that paid him three times what he would be making at the airline, so he looked at our new job as a way to get a restricted ATP and some civilian experience so when his reserve bid was finished he’d be snapped up by Delta, United or Southwest.

We started, and as I was in the left seat I was the Captain or the non-flying pilot so I got to use the checklist to do my flows, as we hadn’t learned left seat. I watched as Travis expertly worked through the FO flows picking out a few Easter eggs and correcting them as Captain Rocket watched, still having his conversation with his friend in the real world. The FTD process is used to introduce pilots to line flying, the process and procedures of getting a transport category airplane off the gate and out to the runway. Travis had been working at Piedmont for a couple of years and he had quit to come to the airline to get jet time. He had done it in the real world daily, on a more difficult airplane than this one.  “Good catch Travis” came from Cap’n Johnny as Travis righted the wrongness. Myself, as usual, I was drowning in fear with a head stuffed full of a lot of disassociated knowledge-not knowing what I was supposed to be doing, when or why I was supposed to be doing it.

The drills were as expected, we got thru the flows and checklists and were miraculously transported to the end of runway 15L in Houston. We had to run the before takeoff flows and checklists plus the takeoff call outs that are required when leaving the earth in a 25 ton aircraft.

This was one of my weak spots as I never connected all of the studying we were doing to practical application. Things need to be checked and said, operations performed in a sequence after certain criteria is met. Having no exposure to this type of flying, all of my learning was to this point was disjointed, accomplished solely to get past the next fire. It all started falling apart during the first takeoff roll.

Jetlink 4999 cleared for take off climb runway heading maintain 4000 Captain Rocket called out. I respond 4999 cleared for takeoff runway heading 4000 while Travis finishes the before takeoff checklist by verbalizing “ Runway 15 verfied, exterior lights on, before takeoff checklist complete then advances the thrust levers while saying Set Thrust. I say “Thrust set 85.5 percent” replacing  his hands on the power levers. As we motor in the blind down the runway I say 80 Knots to which Travis responds Cross Check. Our speed increases down a runway we cant see as we accelerate I call out V1 rotate. Travis pulls back on the control column as I call out Positive rate and he replies with Gear Up, Heading, Low Bank. I reach across and lift the gear handle. While my hand is moving across to the flight control panel I stumble for a second and ultimately press the correct buttons but forget to press the yaw damper button. At 1000’ above the surface I forget my call “Acceleration Height” and Travis is motioning to me to say it trying his best to remind me that I am fucking up without calling attention to it in front of the Rocket man.

V2 + 15 is the next call out and I miss that one too. Johnny is starting to notice all is not well with my pilot not flying skills and he pauses the simulation.

“Sean your partner is waiting for you to tell him things so he can do other things. When you don’t respond in the anticipated manner you are putting him and the passengers at risk. He has to wonder whether you are part of the crew or whether you are incapacitated. So just say it, he’s waiting for it. Its like a handshake, he’s got his hand out and you’re leaving him hanging”.

I know I’m fucking up, and I glance quickly at my watch to see how much more time I have to deal with before I can leave, have a few drinks, food and look at a pretty barmaid.

We’re squarely in my weak spot now because no matter how many times I study this stuff, without having an understanding of when and how it is used, it just doesn’t click. Flying the airplane I have no problem with, shooting the ILS down to minimums or holding a speed and heading during the climb leveling off and maneuvering is a walk in the park when we get around to it. The mechanics of flying are of no concern to Captain Johnny. Unfortunately for me, all of those skills are assumed, you’ll get no credit for that because after all, we’re all professional pilots with ATP ratings or at least the prerequisites for the rating.  The things I am good at count for nothing here.

We’re repositioned back to the runway again and we go thru the drill again, with no better results which is clearly irritating our instructor. Travis is doing his best to cover for me, but each screw up is pissing off the instructor and taking my nervousness up an order of magnitude.

Travis performs perfectly, he started this training three days after leaving his previous job. He’s seen an EICAS and annunciator panel before and knows which buttons to push to silence the master cautions and warnings. Myself the largest airplane I had ever flown was a Piper Seneca and I had a rough time with that.  During the preflight briefing the flying pilot has to run through the litany of what we are going to do in the case of an emergency. This was another item that was briefly touched on while I was fighting the fire closest to my dick so naturally I was listening intently as Travis did his so I could remember what he said and repeat it.  Naturally this was an additional item added to the things I was worried about already, things I was deficient in during my partners stellar performance.

All this is rattling around my head as we’re flying getting ready for all hell to break loose.  

The non flying pilot’s role to fix any problems that occur while the flying pilot takes care of flying.  I didn’t  really understand this when I volunteered to be first in the hot seat. Actually I was so far behind the ball, I had no idea I was in the hot seat. I was having difficulty just remembering what I needed to know when things worked correctly, my head and hands full enough with the procedures, knobology, callouts of a typical day.

When things go bad  the pilots first turn to “memory items” . These are items that we were drilled on from the second day of ground training. run the immediate access item checklist then transition to the Quick Reference List which, though it sounds brief, it’s a wire bound book about an inch thick.  

Ding – The flight attendant call button was pushed so I press the corresponding button on the overhead panel.  It’s captain Johnny but he tells me its “Bubbles” in his best bimbo voice. “Captain there is smoke in the cabin it’s starting from the back of the plane and is halfway to the front”. I say “standby” and “we’ll get back to you”

Travis and I start with our memory items. Oxygen mask don, 100%, smoke goggles don, recirculation fan off, crew communications establish is the procedure. I put the mask on uneventfully and went into the bag where the smoke goggles were stored. I was wearing my glasses, which are no line progressive trifocals, in the frantic dash to get the goggles on they knocked my glasses sideways so one side was about a half inch higher than the other. This drill had been conducted with every new hire pilot since these devices were built  and as such the smoke goggles had considerable scratches and while transparent enough to see through with my glasses on sideways reading would be challenging.

After the memory items were completed I am loudly reminded to run the Immediate Action Items Checklist. As the non flying pilot I was to be the guy who fixed the problem. The IAC essentially details what we had already done as memory items and is finished with “memory items complete do to page 1-217” in the QRH.

We’ve been informed by bubbles that it is Lavatory Smoke so I start looking for page 1-217 to find out what we need to do next. The QRH is an orange book and I am frantically paging through it trying to find the information that I need to fix the situation.

With the scratches in the goggles and my glasses askew I’m having a hard time focusing on anything. Getting shouted at by an ex cop doesn’t make it any easier.

I’m supposed to be locating circuit breakers and pulling them. The breakers are identified by alphabetical rows and numbered columns and naturally that is a detail we learned in ground school that has slipped my mind in the heat of the moment, plus I really cant see or read anything. The shouting continues. Finally our instructor realizes it isn’t going to get any better, we’re nearly out of time and the next set of victims are waiting outside.

We make it through the session primarily because Travis is on the ball and we’ve allocated all of the time we can use in the FTD. We don’t make it through the complete program but Captain Rocket deems we’ve done enough to warrant calling it a session.  We’re told to pack up, take a short break and reconvene in a briefing room upstairs.

I get there first and the first thing out of his mouth is “Se-aann are you a nervous man?”  I know where he’s going with this and now that I’m out of the airline element my business experience takes over. “Not typically” I say and leave it at that. He’s baiting me for an excuse or something he can use to run me down some more but I’m not biting.  “Well what are those pills you got in your flight case?” I carry an arthritis  bottle of Advil and a container of Tums everywhere I go, always have no matter where I’ve worked. I simply respond “Advil and Tums” which annoys him further. Captain Rocket enjoys putting people on the spot and views it as his mission to weed out the unqualified or candidates that don’t fit his worldview on what a potential airline pilot should act like. The company already knows this so that’s why they usually assign him to preside over the non-jeopardy sessions. Pilots are in short supply since congress mandated first officers must have an ATP rating prior to flying for a air carrier, and they spend a bit of money recruiting and training them so they don’t want cowboy instructors sending anyone home after six weeks of hotels and per diem have been paid out.

“Well somehow you’ve got to learn to calm down, maybe taking a few of those Advil’s would help you out?”

Travis walks in and interrupts the tirade as the Captain sneers at me. The debriefing continues but my part is largely done,  and Travis did well so the balance goes uneventfully. All done we pack up and head out to Travis’s truck.  My thinking was he would be upset with me for turning in such a shitty performance. As soon as we clear the building he turns and say’s “did you believe that guy? What an Asshole” we laugh about this for the ride back to the hotel, we have a day off before we have to come back for our next session so we grab some food and drink a few beers.  I’m still alive and ready to piss on the next fire, the barmaid isn’t cute but she is friendly. Two out of three isn’t bad.