Word: faa
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Federal aviation experts?including Lewis, a lawyer and licensed pilot, and FAA Administrator Lynn Helms, former chairman of Piper Aircraft Corp. and an experienced test pilot?insisted that the system was as safe as ever. Noting that traffic was down at the nation's airports, some airline pilots contended that this actually made flying less hazardous than before the strike. At busy airports, like Chicago's O'Hare International, aircraft were required to stay 20 miles behind another plane approaching a landing, rather than the usual five miles; planes taking off had to wait five minutes instead of the normal...
Complaining that airline traffic was up sharply while the number of controllers was not, some 450 of them protested in June 1969 by staying home for two days, claiming to be sick. The FAA declared that PATCO had encouraged the sickout and that it would no longer recognize the union. For three weeks in the spring of 1970, some 3,000 controllers claimed illness and stayed off the job. "We had no equipment?it was dangerous, dangerous," recalls Carl Vaughn, 45, a Pittsburgh controller. "Little or no automation had been introduced, and near misses were a common occurrence." The FAA...
...traffic continued to grow, so did the controllers' concerns about stress and safety, and so did PATCO. By the mid'70s, the union had nearly 15,000 members?all but 2,000 of the entire staff of qualified FAA controllers. The union grew increasingly militant as rank-and-file members felt that each new contract failed to meet their same old demands for more reliable equipment, less grueling shift schedules and more...
Still, a strike seemed far from inevitable when negotiations between PATCO and the FAA began last February. Technically, the FAA is not like a private employer in such talks; anything it agreed to would have to be approved by Congress. Poli opened the bargaining by presenting 96 demands, a list the FAA's Helms understandably dismissed as excessive. Yet the union was truly serious about three of its concerns...
...increase with the difficulty of the job (starting pay at one of the busy "birdcages" near New York, Chicago and Los Angeles is $37,000). On top of that, Poli wanted a twice-a-year, cost-of-living increase that would be 1½ times the rate of inflation. The FAA offered a $4,000 wage hike, which would have included a $1,700 increase as part of the 4.8% raise given all federal employees this year...