The FAA is moving forward with its controversial plan to pull National Weather Service forecasters from its en route centers, but not without concerns from other government agencies. At a congressional hearing last week, officials from the FAA asserted they would only proceed with the plan if a nine-month trial run was successful, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. But the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, expressed concerns, given that the FAA and the NWS haven’t come up with specific, shared goals for the project. “Any changes to the current structure could degrade aviation operations and safety – and the agencies may not know it,” David Powner, a GAO director, was reported as saying. Currently, the FAA spends $12 million per year to have 84 forecasters stationed at en route centers nationwide for 16 hours each day. Under the proposed consolidation, the agency would instead pay to have a smaller number of forecasters on call 24 hours per day, working out of two offices that would be in contact with all centers. The FAA says not only will the move save money (it won’t say how much), but it would make nationwide forecasts more consistent. The weather service says it will back the plan as long as it can still deliver accurate and timely forecasts.

The ranks of air traffic controllers are swelling quickly as the FAA has kept hiring new controllers at a brisk pace, and as older controllers are putting off retirement in hopes of getting a better labor contract soon. The FAA has hired 5,500 new controllers in the last three years, creating a burden at some facilities where as many as 40 percent of the controllers are uncertified trainees who must work alongside certified controllers, the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization reported. In the previous fiscal year, which ended in September 2008, the FAA hired 2,196 new controllers. The agency now counts 15,400 controllers in its workforce and says it will continue to hire about 1,500 controllers per year for the next few years, though it does not expect air traffic operations to surge upward anytime soon. The FAA found itself in a staffing crunch in late 2006 and 2007 after it imposed work rules that controllers opposed. That prompted some controllers who had been hired after the 1981 PATCO strike to start retiring early, leaving the remaining controllers at many facilities to work mandatory overtime. Because it can take three or more years for new controllers to become fully certified, it may still be a while before staff evens out at some facilities.

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.

Up to 40 percent of the controllers at some of the nation’s busiest air traffic control facilities are developmental trainees, a new government report has found. And on average, a quarter of the controllers at any given facility are trainees, the Los Angeles Daily Breeze reported. That’s causing a new set of staffing problems, since it could be a year or more before those trainees are fully certified. At Los Angeles International Airport, a fifth of the controllers are trainees, while at Socal Approach, nearly a third are in training. That means experienced controllers are working more hours as they train new controllers. At LAX last year, controllers clocked nearly 5,900 hours of overtime, versus 600 hours of overtime the year before. The FAA is handing out bonuses of $25,000 or more to experienced controllers who transfer to busy, short-staffed facilities, and to controllers who stay on an extra year instead of retiring early. While the number of trainees is climbing steadily and will continue to do so for the near term, the number of serious operational errors at many busy facilities is lower than at this time last year.

The FAA on Friday released a database of bird strikes voluntarily reported by airports and airlines dating back to 1990, reversing course on a plan to keep the information hidden from public view. In an announcement Wednesday, the FAA said there was no safety risk in releasing the data. A “very small amount” of information, including personal phone numbers, was redacted, the agency said. The database currently allows basic searches by using a gargantuan pull-down menu to select an airport, airline or date range. The FAA said in the next four months, it will upgrade the online search functions to make them easier to use and to allow for more advanced searches. Users can also download the entire database in a format to be used in Microsoft Access. The airport with the most bird strikes was Denver International, which logged more than 2,400 incidents, the Christian Science Monitor reported. Many other airports reported 1,000 or more incidents over that time period. The airports with the greatest number of incidents causing severe damage to an airliner were New York’s JFK, with more than 80 such events, and Sacramento International Airport, with 56 occurrences. Because the reporting system is voluntary, it is difficult to make comparisons between airports. The FAA estimates that the incidents in the database may comprise just 20 percent of the actual number of bird strikes.

This time last year, American Airlines was forced to ground its fleet of MD-80 jets to fix problems with how the planes had been repaired, stranding tens of thousands of travelers and costing the airline millions of dollars. A year later, American is being subjected to a three-month audit of its maintenance practices as the FAA cracks down on maintenance and other issues, the Dallas Morning News reported. Most recently, the agency discovered that thrust reversers on American’s fleet of Boeing 777s weren’t reassembled correctly, and that mechanics were using the wrong tool to pack emergency slides in some other aircraft. While the airline is complaining about having to comply with the strictest letter of the law, it hasn’t had to ground large portions of its fleet, either, due to the FAA’s willingness to give the airline a flexible repair schedule. The new oversight comes after the FAA came under the gun last year for letting airlines get away with maintenance lapses.

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.

Pilots over much of southern Florida can now take advantage of ADS-B coverage to get information on weather and planes flying near them – if they have the right cockpit equipment. A company with a $1.8 billion contract from the FAA has been installing Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast stations in Florida for the last year and now has much of the system there up and running, the Tampa Tribune reported. But even as the equipment goes into operation more places and with much of the eastern seaboard covered, the costs for new cockpit gear could leave pilots and airlines reeling. For a typical general aviation plane, a Mode S transponder starts at around $3,600. Add on a display for traffic and weather information, along with installation, and owners would shell out as much as $30,000 today to make use of ADS-B. For commercial airliners, the full equipment package would cost at least $160,000 and possibly much more. Some operators in Florida and elsewhere are already seeing the benefits of ADS-B, despite the costs. One flight school has the equipment in all 100 of its planes, allowing managers to track the progress of training flights. And UPS, the first airline to equip its fleet, has found it can increase the number of arrivals at its Louisville, Ky., hub by as much as 15 percent. Plus it can take advantage of optimum descent profiles that save fuel and cut emissions when the conditions are right.

The global economy is undoubtedly putting the damper on commercial air travel, causing the FAA to adjust its figures for growth over the next 16 years. It will be 2021 before airlines carry 1 billion passengers, the FAA said in its annual aviation forecast. Last year’s forecast called for hitting that mark in 2016. Growth in passengers will climb each year by about 3 percent – though the agency expects a drop of about 9 percent in passenger loadings this year. Because so many carriers have cut capacity by grounding aircraft, passenger counts won’t rebound quickly once the recession ends, the FAA predicts. Once it does, the number of flight operations grows at the meager pace of 1.5 percent each year. The total number of operations will drop to about 55 million at airports this year and then slowly rise to about 68 million by 2025, the end of the 16-year forecast period.