Controllers attack plan to shift meteorologists

Air-traffic controllers say a proposal by the Federal Aviation Administration to take meteorologists out of a major control center near Atlanta will endanger airline passengers, an accusation flatly rejected by the FAA.

[ Submit your comments below. ]

Atlanta Center near Hampton and 20 other air-traffic control centers would lose their resident weather prognosticators under the proposal. Those functions would be consolidated in two centers, which would disseminate weather information to the other centers.

“Safety will not be compromised if we change the way we disseminate info at our 21 centers,” said FAA spokesman Jim Peters. He said if weather operations are consolidated, the change would first be reviewed by the National Transportation Safety Board to assure safety is not compromised.

There are four meteorologists at Atlanta Center and about 80 at the other centers that would be impacted.

Air-traffic controllers and meteorologists say the change would impact airline safety at the centers, which direct high-altitude flights. Atlanta Center controls flights over Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama.

“I don’t want to be on a plane that needs to land right away and depend on technology that could break down,” said Dan Sobien, the Washington-based union president for the National Weather Service meteorologists. “Right now if they need weather information, they yell across the hall.”

The current system was first put into place after the 1977 Southern Airways DC-9 crash near New Hope, Ga., which killed 63 people on the plane and nine on the ground. Federal safety officials found the inability to quickly analyze and transmit information about hazardous weather conditions contributed to the crash. The plane lost power to both engines when it attempted to fly through a spring thunderstorm.

Peters said technology has changed dramatically in the last three decades, permitting the air-traffic control centers to consolidate some of their functions.

The air-traffic controllers’ union, which has been involved in a long and bitter contract dispute with the FAA, argues that the FAA will give up local expertise on “weather patterns and phenomenon” if the agency consolidates meteorological functions.

“Losing that expertise would surely compromise the safety of the flying public,” said Calvin Phillips, a union representative at Atlanta Center.

The FAA on Monday decided to extend its response period for the proposal for another 30 days.