Keeping the Skies Safe

As air travel becomes ubiquitous, the federal government must ensure that the crowded skies are both friendly and safe.  In order to reassure the public that these objectives can be achieved, the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) air traffic control system must be modernized and air traffic controllers must be adequately trained.

Unfortunately, there have been problems with both efforts.  The NextGen modernization program, which would transform air traffic control from radar and radio to GPS, is proceeding far slower than anticipated.  While no one is calling for the NextGen program to be scrapped, there has been pressure for the FAA to start from scratch the Air Traffic Controller Optimum Training Solution (ATCOTS) program, which began in 2009. 

While everyone agrees that there have been issues associated with ATCOTS, both the Department of Transportation Office of the Inspector General (IG) and members of Congress have concluded that they have been caused by the FAA’s mismanagement and insufficient oversight of the program.  ATCOTS has elements of both human resources and information technology (IT) programs, and as Citizens Against Government Waste has often noted, federal agencies do not manage information technology (IT) programs very well.  In fact, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has added IT acquisition to its High Risk List of programs most vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse.

GAO said, “…federal IT investments too frequently fail or incur cost overruns and schedule slippages while contributing little to mission-related outcomes…Federal IT projects have also failed due to a lack of oversight and governance.  Executive-level governance and oversight across the government has often been ineffective…”

According to a September 30, 2010 IG report, “In designing and executing the ATCOTS program, FAA did not fully 1) mitigate staffing and cost issues identified during acquisition planning, (2) adequately define how many controllers would need training, or (3) initially implement adequate controls to oversee contractor services or ensure that fees paid for performance were justified.  As a result, FAA now faces significant challenges in achieving the program’s goals.”

Nearly three and a half years after the 2010 report, at a January 14, 2014 hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Subcommittee on Contracting and Oversight, DOT Assistant IG for Acquisition and Procurement Audits Mary Kay Langan-Feirson delivered an update on the progress, or lack thereof, made by the FAA.  Ms. Langan-Feirson stated that, “Since our September 2010 report, FAA has taken some steps to better assess training needs, such as use of enhanced program management tools to better prioritize where training is needed.  However, FAA has yet to clearly define its controller training requirements or determine the number of controller training hours needed – recommendations we made in 2010.  Without clearly defined training requirements, FAA cannot develop realistic estimates of its controller training costs or hold the contractor accountable for desired outcomes.”

Subcommittee Chair Claire McCaskill’s (D-Mo.) opening statement noted that, “The IG had several recommendations for the FAA.  The most important one was that FAA needed to figure out what training it needed and how much it was going to cost.  Unfortunately, FAA failed to take the IG’s recommendation to heart. Instead, FAA let the contract continue unchanged, racking up at least $89 million in additional costs to the taxpayer.”  Other critics of the FAA’s self-inflicted problems with ATCOTS include former members of Congress such Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-Ohio) and Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.), who respectively have opined about the serious internal problems that plague the FAA.  According to former Sen. Kit Bond’s (R-Mo.) January 14, 2015 op-ed in The Hill “…key to FAA’s initial justification to create the ATCOTS program in the first place was addressing the looming air traffic controller shortage.  However, despite claiming to understand the impending problem, the FAA has failed to follow through with hiring and training air traffic controllers to replace its ranks.  It’s obvious that ending the current air traffic controller training program and starting a new one from scratch would only exacerbate the shortage of these important professionals, not to mention the cost to taxpayers.”

Air traffic controllers clearly need to be trained for the Next Gen system.  Based on the analysis of ATCOTS by the DOT IG as well as current and former members of Congress, scrapping the program, as the FAA has proposed, does not make sense.  Indeed, eliminating it without addressing the systemic management problems at FAA would be akin to treating the symptoms of an illness without resolving the underlying disease.  Taxpayers and airline passengers deserve a cure; not a flimsy bandage.

— P.J. Austin