Sequester cuts: effects on travel.
Apr 22, 2013, 12:30 pm
#91
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Did they actually lay off anyone? I thought they were just reducing hours (everyone has to take a mandatory day off every 10 days or something like that).
Not to get too OMNI/PR on this topic, but we had a retired FAA employee in the AS forum say that the last couple of times they were close to sequestering, those whose hours were cut were the paper pushers (like the former FAA employee himself)--the front-lines folks necessary for daily operations were not touched.
Not to get too OMNI/PR on this topic, but we had a retired FAA employee in the AS forum say that the last couple of times they were close to sequestering, those whose hours were cut were the paper pushers (like the former FAA employee himself)--the front-lines folks necessary for daily operations were not touched.
Apr 22, 2013, 12:42 pm
#92
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Many airports operate "below capacity", and for those airports, this will have little impact. However, for most of the larger airports that generally operate at full capacity, any reduction (even 10%) in staffing will result in delays. This is why the airlines are upset at the "across the board" furloughs that affect every airport with an equal reduction in staffing.
I understanding that there is a "fairness" issue - why should employees at the smaller airports that operate below capacity be penalized to a greater extent than similar employees at the bigger airports? But from a system efficiency perspective, it is not a good decision. One would have hoped, with more than a month's warning, that someone could have figured out a strategy that would have been both fair to the workers and minimized impact on traveling. I'm not an anti-government fanatic, but this is typical of an inefficient, poorly managed bureaucracy.
I understanding that there is a "fairness" issue - why should employees at the smaller airports that operate below capacity be penalized to a greater extent than similar employees at the bigger airports? But from a system efficiency perspective, it is not a good decision. One would have hoped, with more than a month's warning, that someone could have figured out a strategy that would have been both fair to the workers and minimized impact on traveling. I'm not an anti-government fanatic, but this is typical of an inefficient, poorly managed bureaucracy.
Apr 22, 2013, 12:47 pm
#93
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My son-in-law is not a paper pusher. He is an ATC at PDX and spent his furlough day (Sunday) at the coast. They are having to give up 1 day in 10, basically a 10% pay cut for him and 10% manpower cut for the tower. So to see a 10% reduction in operations capability is to be expected.
Apr 22, 2013, 12:48 pm
#94
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Many airports operate "below capacity", and for those airports, this will have little impact. However, for most of the larger airports that generally operate at full capacity, any reduction (even 10%) in staffing will result in delays. This is why the airlines are upset at the "across the board" furloughs that affect every airport with an equal reduction in staffing.
I understanding that there is a "fairness" issue - why should employees at the smaller airports that operate below capacity be penalized to a greater extent than similar employees at the bigger airports? But from a system efficiency perspective, it is not a good decision. One would have hoped, with more than a month's warning, that someone could have figured out a strategy that would have been both fair to the workers and minimized impact on traveling. I'm not an anti-government fanatic, but this is typical of an inefficient, poorly managed bureaucracy.
I understanding that there is a "fairness" issue - why should employees at the smaller airports that operate below capacity be penalized to a greater extent than similar employees at the bigger airports? But from a system efficiency perspective, it is not a good decision. One would have hoped, with more than a month's warning, that someone could have figured out a strategy that would have been both fair to the workers and minimized impact on traveling. I'm not an anti-government fanatic, but this is typical of an inefficient, poorly managed bureaucracy.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...close/2089091/
Apr 22, 2013, 1:00 pm
#95
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My stepsister is an ATC in Miami. She gets to take every other Wednesday off, unpaid. She's senior enough where she was working M-F after years of weekend and overnight shifts.
I haven't read anything about how this is going to affect rest time for the ATCs either. I'm talking to her tonight (it's her birthday.. Happy Birthday, right?), so maybe I'll have more info later on.
The suggestions I've been reading online that delays were somehow politically motivated are ridiculous.
I haven't read anything about how this is going to affect rest time for the ATCs either. I'm talking to her tonight (it's her birthday.. Happy Birthday, right?), so maybe I'll have more info later on.
The suggestions I've been reading online that delays were somehow politically motivated are ridiculous.
Apr 22, 2013, 1:12 pm
#96
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But The FAA is addressing that and proceeding with flat-out closing 149 smaller towers.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...close/2089091/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...close/2089091/
Apr 22, 2013, 1:50 pm
#97
Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 220
No they didn't cut any employees, they cut the hours of all employees.
If you ever ran a business you would undertand the difference. When your budget is cut, you lay people off and tell the remaining staff to do their work. You don't tell everyone that they will come in 4 days a week and get paid 80% - that would crush morale far more than a round of layoffs.
Ergo, the intelligent way to handle sequester would be to gut the DOT headquarters staff including the political appointees. But they won't do that, because the public would not care nor see a reduction in service. Better instead to piss off the public, so they will call their Congress person to complain. It's petty politics, holding the traveling public as a hostage.
If you ever ran a business you would undertand the difference. When your budget is cut, you lay people off and tell the remaining staff to do their work. You don't tell everyone that they will come in 4 days a week and get paid 80% - that would crush morale far more than a round of layoffs.
Ergo, the intelligent way to handle sequester would be to gut the DOT headquarters staff including the political appointees. But they won't do that, because the public would not care nor see a reduction in service. Better instead to piss off the public, so they will call their Congress person to complain. It's petty politics, holding the traveling public as a hostage.
It costs money, huge amounts of money, to do that. Skilled workers usually have substantially larger severance packages, fire them and rehire them six months later, and you've saved no money at all. Have to hire someone new because they've moved on, and you're going to cost even more as you have to retrain them. And still, even if you do rehire someone, ATCs would almost certainly all need to be re-certified after re-hiring, and that costs.
And yes, as noted, they have closed towers and told entire offices they are on full furlough with no pay at all for months till ATC gets its funding back. And yes, it will go on to cost a ton to get those towers back and operational after the sequester because a lot of those workers won't come back having gone on to other jobs.
And really, you think having to increase your work load 20%, without overtime and seeing one in five of your co-workers canned, is a better morale situation? It's wonderful how people who maybe, maybe, have experience being the manager of a cost-mart, think they understand how to hire and fire people in safety critical positions needed by the national infrastructure.
Apr 22, 2013, 2:22 pm
#98
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The FAA is going to have to figure something out that's going to work, regardless of whether it's employees like the solutions or not. Let's face it, nobody on either side in congress is showing any real interest in addressing the sequester stuff. The odds of the funding coming back seem to be pretty slim, and what they're doing now is not going to be a long term viable solution.
Apr 22, 2013, 2:40 pm
#99
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It's not like the FAA have a free hand to just assume they can lay off 20% of their workforce, and scale back the whole system essentially permanently.
And even if they could, that would mean scaling back the number of flights allowed in the air, and increasing the acceptable length of queues and waiting time on the ground. The idea that it would be acceptable or safe to increase ATC work load by 20%, while also reducing staff and over-time, is laughable.
The idea that impact on passengers is "just being done for political effect" is... not thought out well. What the FAA does costs money. If you don't want to pay for it, expect not to fly. At least not safely.
And even if they could, that would mean scaling back the number of flights allowed in the air, and increasing the acceptable length of queues and waiting time on the ground. The idea that it would be acceptable or safe to increase ATC work load by 20%, while also reducing staff and over-time, is laughable.
The idea that impact on passengers is "just being done for political effect" is... not thought out well. What the FAA does costs money. If you don't want to pay for it, expect not to fly. At least not safely.
Apr 22, 2013, 3:21 pm
#100
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It's not like the FAA have a free hand to just assume they can lay off 20% of their workforce, and scale back the whole system essentially permanently.
And even if they could, that would mean scaling back the number of flights allowed in the air, and increasing the acceptable length of queues and waiting time on the ground. The idea that it would be acceptable or safe to increase ATC work load by 20%, while also reducing staff and over-time, is laughable.
The idea that impact on passengers is "just being done for political effect" is... not thought out well. What the FAA does costs money. If you don't want to pay for it, expect not to fly. At least not safely.
And even if they could, that would mean scaling back the number of flights allowed in the air, and increasing the acceptable length of queues and waiting time on the ground. The idea that it would be acceptable or safe to increase ATC work load by 20%, while also reducing staff and over-time, is laughable.
The idea that impact on passengers is "just being done for political effect" is... not thought out well. What the FAA does costs money. If you don't want to pay for it, expect not to fly. At least not safely.
Funny how the FAA could operate all the airport towers on a similarly reduced budget as recently as a year ago. And somehow Reagan managed to keep the ATC systems going with supervisory staff after he terminated 11,000 air traffic controllers. Yes, there is inflation of personnel costs every year, but that is no excuse for the kind of silliness we see now. DOT (which oversees FAA) is a big organization - it could easily delay road project grants and lay off home office staff (permanently in my opinion). Instead it chose to manage the budget cuts in a manner that would inconvenience thousands of people, deliberately, to project political power and to preserve government union jobs.
I'd expect to see the business lobby get involved soon and put on the pressure to resolve this one. It is one thing to inconvenience lowly leisure travelers (myself included) but quite another to retard the flow of business.
Apr 22, 2013, 3:22 pm
#101
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Did they actually lay off anyone? I thought they were just reducing hours (everyone has to take a mandatory day off every 10 days or something like that).
Not to get too OMNI/PR on this topic, but we had a retired FAA employee in the AS forum say that the last couple of times they were close to sequestering, those whose hours were cut were the paper pushers (like the former FAA employee himself)--the front-lines folks necessary for daily operations were not touched.
I tend to agree with Boraxo's take on this whole thing. It feels like a ploy to get the public to support more funding so everyone, paper-pushers included, can keep their cushy jobs. Speaking as a former manager of a small business, I can attest that two-thirds of paper-pushers are unnecessary. They should be the first to go, not the folks actually running the front-end operation (in the DOT's case, that's the controllers).
Not to get too OMNI/PR on this topic, but we had a retired FAA employee in the AS forum say that the last couple of times they were close to sequestering, those whose hours were cut were the paper pushers (like the former FAA employee himself)--the front-lines folks necessary for daily operations were not touched.
I tend to agree with Boraxo's take on this whole thing. It feels like a ploy to get the public to support more funding so everyone, paper-pushers included, can keep their cushy jobs. Speaking as a former manager of a small business, I can attest that two-thirds of paper-pushers are unnecessary. They should be the first to go, not the folks actually running the front-end operation (in the DOT's case, that's the controllers).
I work for another federal agency.
Yes the cuts are done in a way to make people notice. Sure they could instead absorb these cuts by changing vacation time people take into furlough days.
Staffing for a 24 hr service does take into account people taking vacation and sick time. So there is in general a 10% staffing buffer to cover this.
What has happened where I work is the mandate by congress gave no flexibility with funding so it inherently affected all.
DoD exempted civilians who are mission critical or in combat zones. The other "paper pushers"per se were the ones hit.
They forget that some situations you need someone on call or have it staffed for services they didn't consider.
Sorry but 2/3 of the employees aren't paper pushers.
Many agencies allocate staffing based n need
For example the national parks allocate staffing based on visitor counts. TSA allocates staffing based on inflow traffic.
Could you find thing to cut or streamline --sure--- but that also includes the military. We don't need to be the world protector or the military command f the UN. Thus you could cut 50% of the military and be just fine.
Apr 22, 2013, 3:29 pm
#102
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I didn't say 2/3 of employees are paper-pushers. I said 2/3 of paper-pushers are unnecessary. With a reduction in administrative staff, some aspects of the operation do change, but what I've found is that the savings of not having to deal with all of the bureaucratic overhead far outweighs whatever compromises need to be made in the operation to handle the reduced administrative support.
Apr 22, 2013, 4:01 pm
#103
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Getting back to what's going on operationally with the airlines for a moment...
The excerpt below is from this WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...ist_smartbrief
"Airlines took differing approaches to the controversial staffing cutbacks in terms of their passenger communications. AMR Corp.'s AAMRQ -4.92%American Airlines, United Continental Holdings Inc. UAL -1.47%and Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL -0.79%notified passengers on their websites that flight delays may be coming. United and American promised updates once information became available.
JetBlue Airways Corp., JBLU -1.40%Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -1.27%and US Airways Group Inc. LCC -3.12%appeared to be silent on the issue.
Alaska Air Group Inc, ALK -1.28%parent of Alaska Airlines, was the most communicative. The Seattle-based carrier, which accounts for only about 4% of domestic capacity, said Saturday that although it doesn't intend to precancel any flights, it has contingency plans in place to divert flights and shuttle passengers to and from nearby airports to avoid the facilities that are expected to see the most delays.
Alaska Air also said it will allow customers who miss flights to rebook when space is available, with no increase in fare or change fees, and asked customers to check in for domestic flights two hours in advance."
The excerpt below is from this WSJ article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...ist_smartbrief
"Airlines took differing approaches to the controversial staffing cutbacks in terms of their passenger communications. AMR Corp.'s AAMRQ -4.92%American Airlines, United Continental Holdings Inc. UAL -1.47%and Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL -0.79%notified passengers on their websites that flight delays may be coming. United and American promised updates once information became available.
JetBlue Airways Corp., JBLU -1.40%Southwest Airlines Co. LUV -1.27%and US Airways Group Inc. LCC -3.12%appeared to be silent on the issue.
Alaska Air Group Inc, ALK -1.28%parent of Alaska Airlines, was the most communicative. The Seattle-based carrier, which accounts for only about 4% of domestic capacity, said Saturday that although it doesn't intend to precancel any flights, it has contingency plans in place to divert flights and shuttle passengers to and from nearby airports to avoid the facilities that are expected to see the most delays.
Alaska Air also said it will allow customers who miss flights to rebook when space is available, with no increase in fare or change fees, and asked customers to check in for domestic flights two hours in advance."
Apr 22, 2013, 6:12 pm
#104
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"Alaska Air Group Inc, ALK -1.28%parent of Alaska Airlines, was the most communicative. The Seattle-based carrier, which accounts for only about 4% of domestic capacity, said Saturday that although it doesn't intend to precancel any flights, it has contingency plans in place to divert flights and shuttle passengers to and from nearby airports to avoid the facilities that are expected to see the most delays.
Alaska Air also said it will allow customers who miss flights to rebook when space is available, with no increase in fare or change fees, and asked customers to check in for domestic flights two hours in advance."
Alaska Air also said it will allow customers who miss flights to rebook when space is available, with no increase in fare or change fees, and asked customers to check in for domestic flights two hours in advance."
As the inbound aircraft for this morning's AS459 was in ONT, we were treated to a bus ride from LAX to ONT. The bus driver mistook the car rental facility for the terminal. We directed him out of there and over to Terminal 2, although he did attempt to cut through the parking lot for Terminal 4 to get there. Remembering that bus accident at MIA a while ago, I was thankful that ONT has no low overpasses.
Finally arrived at SEA N3 1:37 behind schedule at 12:21 pm.
The FAA has to cut $637 million, so they take a big chunk out of ATC. Meanwhile, Ray LaHood is flying around the country (probably not commercial) inviting municipalities to apply for $450 million in federal funding for bike paths. I really like bike paths too, but lets get our priorities straight.
Finally arrived at SEA N3 1:37 behind schedule at 12:21 pm.
The FAA has to cut $637 million, so they take a big chunk out of ATC. Meanwhile, Ray LaHood is flying around the country (probably not commercial) inviting municipalities to apply for $450 million in federal funding for bike paths. I really like bike paths too, but lets get our priorities straight.
Apr 22, 2013, 6:15 pm
#105
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Just a couple of updates on where air carriers are being affected, even if passengers don't necessarily notice.
From day 1:
- One of the high-altitude sectors over the Atlantic was not opened so flights could not go higher than FL290, making the flights costly in terms of fuel. I'm not sure how many hours this situation was in effect.
- A FedEx plane was delayed to the point it missed the deadline on its overnight deliveries and had to give $1.5 million in refunds.
- The same delay program that was in effect for LAX last night will be in place again tonight. They went to 12 arrivals an hour.
From day 1:
- One of the high-altitude sectors over the Atlantic was not opened so flights could not go higher than FL290, making the flights costly in terms of fuel. I'm not sure how many hours this situation was in effect.
- A FedEx plane was delayed to the point it missed the deadline on its overnight deliveries and had to give $1.5 million in refunds.
- The same delay program that was in effect for LAX last night will be in place again tonight. They went to 12 arrivals an hour.
Last edited by l etoile; Apr 22, 2013 at 6:58 pm Reason: typo