DALLAS/FORT WORTH RADAR OUTAGE RENEWS STAFFING CONCERNS

Details: Published: July 18, 2013

Technicians Union: “Open Watches” Gamble With Air Safety

WASHINGTON, DC—On Saturday, August 6th a brief radar outage occurred during an “open watch” at the Dallas Fort Worth TRACON. During this time no technician was on duty to maintain the four radars that are responsible for monitoring air traffic within the Dallasmetropolitan area.

Professional Airways Systems Specialists(PASS), the union representing FAA technicians, today praised the quick response of the SystemsOperationsCenter’s (SOC) area specialist on duty and cautioned that open watches gamble with the safety of our air travel system.

“Luckily an area specialist from the SOC was able to identify and correct the situation without causing disruption in air traffic at the airport,” said Dave Spero, regional vice president of PASS. “However, management created an unsafe situation by allowing the radars to be left unmanned during the day shift.”

The watch was left open when the radar technician called in sick. “Instead of acting to fill the position, which would require paying overtime, management chose to throw caution to the wind,” said Spero. “We were very lucky that the outage only required a quick fix. Had this been a full scale radar outage, the outcome could have been disastrous.”

“Not wanting to pay overtime is no excuse for leaving a watch open, especially at one of the nation’s busiest airports,” 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.