Anchorage Daily News

The Federal Aviation Administration is offering bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars to veteran air traffic controllers who will pack up, move to Alaska and fill vacancies in control centers that are badly understaffed.

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In its posting announcing the openings in Anchorage and Fairbanks, the federal agency doesn't call for a specific number of volunteers, nor does it detail the staffing deficiencies in Alaska. But the FAA notes at one place in its pitch that it is looking to fill "many" jobs in the two cities.

The agency offers to pay relocation costs -- which can approach six figures if assistance selling a home and buying a new one here is involved, according to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association in Alaska -- and says that those wanting to make the move should get their bid in by Tuesday.

In addition, volunteers making the move north are in line for a bonus of $25,000 a year up to a maximum of $75,000.

"To some extent, the FAA must be agreeing with us that staffing is bad," Rick Thompson, Alaska vice president of the traffic controllers union, said of the transfer offers. "For years, they put things off. And now I guess they're admitting they did."

An FAA spokesman in Renton, Wash., said the agency would not comment in any detail on the bonuses, the air traffic controller shortages in Alaska or the transfer offers.

"However, generally speaking, the agency continues to use a variety of recruitment and retention flexibilities to attract and retain qualified air traffic controllers," spokesman Allen Kenitzer said in an e-mail. "Those flexibilities are currently being offered for positions at Anchorage and Fairbanks."

A recent NATCA press release on the transfer offers referred to the shortages in Anchorage and Fairbanks as "a worsening staffing crisis that has hurt both the safety and efficiency of the air traffic control system. ..."

"It's a sign of desperation that staffing is so bad at these facilities that the FAA has to offer such an outrageously high sum of money instead of negotiating a reasonable and logical solution to the mess it has created," NATCA president Patrick Forrey is quoted as saying.

The shortages in Alaska, and other parts of the country, stem in large part from the upheaval in air traffic controlling of the early 1980s, when President Reagan fired more than 11,000 controllers. The large crop hired in the immediate aftermath of that are now reaching the age of retirement.

"People are leaving when they are eligible to," Thompson said. "They just don't want to work there anymore."

The FAA and the union have been at a standoff in negotiating a new work contact since 2005, when the old contract expired. The union also has blamed work rules imposed by the FAA after the contract expired for contributing to low morale and the loss of experienced controllers.

Despite the controller shortages, Thompson said he wouldn't say air travelers in Alaska are at risk. But he said the consequences of not having enough people have meant requiring more spacing between planes and more flight delays.

Numbers can be difficult to track because the union and FAA don't always look at staffing conditions and demands the same way.

The two often clash, for example, on whether controllers in training should be included in evaluating staffing levels.

In charting Alaska numbers, Thompson uses "authorized" figures that were set in the union's last negotiated contract with the FAA, while comparing them with the "staffing range" imposed by the FAA after the contract expired.

As of May, the number of fully certified controllers -- which the union calls journeyman controllers -- working in Alaska was 44 percent fewer than the number authorized. Control centers had 135 on the job compared with 239 that the union says were authorized in the previous contract.

The FAA says the staffing range in Anchorage should be 144 to 176, according to the union's figures.

FAA spokesman Mike Fergus, however, said the union is, "intentionally or otherwise, misleading the public" by using numbers from an "old contract that is dead and gone."

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