The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) wants the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to cancel cost-cutting plans that would remove meteorologists from the critical Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center. The Boston center is responsible for controlling airspace over Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
NATCA contends the FAA wants to consolidate meteorological units into a couple of “master facilities” in Maryland and Kansas City. The way things are right now, each of the country’s 21 air route traffic control centers has its own weather forecasters – men and women who provide what NATCA terms “face-to-face” weather guidance to air traffic controllers and their supervisors.
Why is that important? The current system stems from the April 4, 1977 crash of Southern Airways Flight 242 in New Hope, Georgia – a crash this Cheapflights reporter covered in peson. In the aftermath of accident, the National Transportation Safety Board determined that the air traffic control system’s inability to quickly disseminate hazardous weather information to Flight 242’s pilots was a major contributor to the crash.
NATCA says both it and the National Weather Service Employees Organization (NWESO) oppose FAA’s consolidation plan “due to the potentially dangerous effects the proposal could have on safety.”
Underscoring the controller’s contention that local is better, Kevin Bianchi, NATCA’s Boston Center Representative, asserts “While it’s relatively easy to provide general weather information for the air traffic control system nationwide, micro-systems affect each air traffic control facility dramatically. Therefore, it is important that the National Weather Service have representatives assigned to each Air Route Traffic Control Center in the system.”
FAA did not immediately respond to Cheapflights’ request for comment on this story.
© Cheapflights Ltd Jerry Chandler
