Air-travel delays to worsen, controllers union says

Airline passengers can expect longer delays this summer because the Federal Aviation Administration won't address the staffing shortage of air traffic controllers, representatives from a local air traffic control union said Tuesday.

The warning comes as airlines such as JetBlue Airways, Virgin America and Alaska Airlines plan to add more flights out of Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Air traffic controllers say those additional flights, coupled with the FAA's refusal to keep veteran air traffic controllers, could lead to even more frustrating waits and possibly compromise safety during the region's peak flying season.

"The FAA doesn't want to admit there is a staffing issue," said Jim Ullmann, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association for the Seattle air traffic control center. "Every discussion we've tried to have has fallen on deaf ears."

Calls to the FAA Northwest office were not immediately returned.

The issue is one of retention. During the 1980s, President Reagan fired more than 10,000 controllers after a strike. The FAA then went on a decadelong hiring wave. Those controllers are now reaching retirement age and they have no incentive to stay because their pay has been frozen, Ullmann said.

Last year, the agency announced plans to hire 15,000 air traffic controllers over the next decade. But that does little to help bolster efficiency, because it takes two to three years for controllers to get certified, said Patrick Brown, vice president of the Seattle "approach-control" facility union.

"We're going to replace these people with new, less experienced controllers, and the efficiency levels have the potential to drop," he said.

He said the FAA isn't making the job attractive enough to keep new recruits. About a year and a half ago, the average starting salary was in the mid-$50,000 range, Brown said. Now, he said, it hovers in the $35,000 to $38,000 range.

Since October, the national rate of attrition is six controllers a day, Ullmann said.

At the Seattle's air-route control centers, 27 out of 160 controllers are eligible to retire now, he said. By the end of the year, that will jump to 45, he added.

"If everybody pulled trigger, we'd be in really bad shape," Ullmann said. "Our hope is that things get changed before there is a horror story."

Sonia Krishnan: 206-515-5546 or skrishnan@seattletimes.com