A team of mediators overseen by Jane Garvey, the FAA’s administrator during Bill Clinton’s second term, will begin negotiating a new contract with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary, said last week in making the announcement that securing a new contract and improving the working relationship between the FAA and its workers was one of his highest priorities, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. But neither side is saying anything specific about what they hope a new contract will look like, or exactly when it would go into effect. NATCA responded to LaHood’s remarks with a short but positive statement, praising LaHood for his “leadership and commitment” in addressing the issue. Controllers have been working under imposed work rules since 2006, when contract talks broke down and the FAA, at the Bush administration’s direction, enacted new rules. Those rules cut base pay for new controllers, limited raises for veteran controllers and made taking time off more difficult. As a result, many controllers started retiring early, causing staffing shortages nationwide that forced controllers at many facilities to work six days each week.

It’s been nearly three years since the Bush Administration’s FAA imposed work rules on its air traffic controllers. But assuming the Obama Administration’s pick to head the FAA, Randy Babbitt, is confirmed, working out a new contract with the union would be the agency’s No.-1 priority, National Public Radio reported. Babbitt is a former aviation consultant and lobbyist. Before that, he was the president of the Air Line Pilots Association. Government officials are already saying the new contract with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association will include raises and better work rules. The current rules lowered the base pay for new controllers and froze salaries for many others. Goal number two for Babbitt’s FAA will be the continued modernization of the nation’s air traffic control infrastructure. But how that project will move forward is unclear, since the transition to ADS-B is costly for the government, airlines and general aviation.

With more than seven months left in its fiscal year, the FAA has already met its target for hiring new controllers this year. Counting those in training, the agency now has about 15,500 air traffic controllers in its ranks, though it could be two to three years before all of the new hires are trained and certified, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. With about 9,000 applicants in the hiring pool, the agency expects to keep well ahead of its hiring needs for the foreseeable future. With President Obama’s coming to office, some controllers who are eligible to retire are now waiting a bit longer in hopes that the agency will reach a new labor agreement. The FAA credits its revamped training program with failing fewer new hires as one of the reasons it is ahead of schedule. As recently as two years ago, air traffic control facilities across the nation were severely understaffed. Controllers hired after the 1981 PATCO strike were nearing retirement age, and a set of work rules imposed in 2006 sped up the rate of attrition.

The new secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation, Ray LaHood, said last week he wants FAA officials to smooth over “lousy” relations with its various labor unions, including air traffic controllers. LaHood, who has not yet selected a new administrator for the FAA, said he had already met with some union leaders and believed new agreements could be reached relatively easily, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. Controllers have been working without a ratified contract since 2007, when the FAA declared an impasse to contract talks and imposed rules that cut pay for new hires and angered many longtime controllers. While many controllers have said they would like the FAA to return to the “green book” contract that existed prior to 2007, and which would greatly increase pay for most members of that union, LaHood said the FAA doesn’t have the funds to do that. Even still, a new agreement between the National Air Traffic Controllers Association and the FAA could ease mandatory overtime requirements that have been in place at many facilities. Separately, LaHood said he wants the FAA to create and meet mid-term goals for its next-generation air traffic control system. And he’s hopeful he can work with lawmakers to pass a comprehensive reauthorization bill for the agency, though he did not indicate where he stands on the contentious topic of user fees.

Air traffic controller Peter Nesbitt will get his previous job back in the control tower at Austin’s Bergstrom International Airport as part of a whistleblower settlement with the FAA. In 2007, Nesbitt began complaining about the risk of a mid-air collision at Memphis International Airport — where he worked at the time — when a plane making a go-around could cross paths with a plane on final to an intersecting runway, the Associated Press reported. Nesbitt sent letters to FAA and National Transportation Safety Board officials detailing his concerns; his managers at Memphis retaliated by forcing him to do desk work. The FAA has tweaked its procedures at Memphis in the wake of Nesbitt’s complaints, so that planes landing and taking off don’t cross paths. Under the settlement, announced last week, Nesbitt will return to the tower at Austin, where he worked prior to Memphis, and will earn what he was making in Memphis. It was Nesbitt’s complaints that the retaliation against him that prompted an agency-wide review last year of how it deals with concerns raised by whistleblowers.

A string of news releases in recent weeks declaring “staffing emergencies” at airports and air traffic control centers across the nation are simply a scare tactic, the FAA has said. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has been sending out the notices, citing numbers of fully trained controllers far below what the union believes each facility should have, the Los Angeles Times reported. The staffing shortages, combined with mandatory six-day work weeks and overtime at some facilities, are putting safety on the line, the union is claiming. Even independent aviation experts said the union’s tactics of sending out the messages may do little more than rile tensions between controllers and the FAA that started in 2006 when the agency imposed work rules on the union. In one of the latest salvos, union officials in Chicago last week said the ground warning system ASDE-X, meant to prevent runway incursions, is a liability because it does not function well in heavy snowfall, the Associated Press reported. The FAA conceded that the system did not register lines of snowplows clearing runways and said it might add transponders to ground vehicles. Similar problems emerged when the system was first installed in St. Louis and Milwaukee, though the system can be adjusted to make it more accurate, the FAA said.

Following a meeting last month and a second one last week, FAA Acting Administrator Bobby Sturgell and controllers’ union president Pat Forrey seem to have made little progress in resolving their differences. The meetings, held at Forrey’s request, dealt mainly with safety-related issues and whether there was any link between controller staffing and an apparent uptick in near-misses and other operational close calls, Government Executive reported. Just the fact that both sides agreed to meet indicates that the mood pay be improving slightly. Separately, Sturgell also sent a letter to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association offering pay hikes for some controllers as a way to resolve an impasse in 2006 that left controllers without a work contract and reduced base pay for new hires. The news about the FAA’s offer came from former NATCA President Jim Carr’s blog, and based on comments there, many controllers appear less than receptive to it.