TAMPA RADIO OUTAGE RAISES STAFFING CONCERNS AMONG TECHNICIANS’ UNION
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- Published: July 18, 2013
WASHINGTON, DC—The loss of commercial power at Tampa International Airport on Saturday has raised serious concerns for Professional Airways Systems Specialists (PASS), the union that represents airport technicians. The outage caused four hours of radio problems and a loss of communication between air traffic controllers and pilots for 20 minutes.
The initial power outage was caused by a pair of blown fuses. The backup generator power turned on successfully; however, because there was not enough staff to make regular trips to the facility that houses the generator, it ended up running unnoticed for almost nine days. At that point, the generator ran out of gas, which resulted in the total power outage. In other words, if staffing had been at the appropriate levels, the problem would have been detected earlier and radio and communication problems could have been avoided.
“This is a huge concern for us. This high-level facility is understaffed and stretched to capacity. Had management scheduled proper coverage of environmental and communications technicians, then surely they would have been able to tend to the facility that houses the generator before it ran out of fuel,” said Dave Spero, PASS Region II vice president.
Technical employees are vital to safely maintaining and certifying radar, navigation and communications equipment in addition to keeping pace with numerous upgrades to instrument landing systems, lighting systems upgrades, circuitry upgrades and tower modernizations.
“With the understaffing issue at Tampa, our technicians simply cannot be expected to keep pace with the numerous tasks, upgrades and operations expected when there are not enough of them,” said Spero.
Luckily, the problem affected only incoming radio transmissions and caused only minor flight delays. “We were very fortunate that the effects of this outage were minimal, but the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] cannot wait until there is a major incident before properly staffing the facilities in a manner which allows us to maintain them properly,” said Spero.
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PASS represents more than 11,000 employees of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Department of Defense who install, maintain, support and certify air traffic control and national defense equipment, inspect and oversee the commercial and general aviation industries, develop flight procedures and perform quality analyses of the aviation systems. For more information, visit the PASS website at www.passnational.org.