Word: patco
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...Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) has refused to reveal how ?xtensive the slowdown will become, and so for the next few days, airline service in Boston will be open to disruption...
...PATCO has ordered the slowdown to dramatize its demands for highter wages, more controllers, and modernized equipment...
...PATCO's aim was to highlight a shortage of controller manpower. Because of this dearth, controllers often have had to work ten-hour shifts and sixday weeks, which can be pretty grueling when one is juggling 20 planes per minute. Typical salaries start at $6,321 and stop at $15,828. Jets on radar screens show up so indistinctly that one controller literally died of fright. Says Michael Rock, chairman of PATCO: "It seems ridiculous that NASA can track a needle and we can't even make out two giant jets if they are closer than a mile...
...annoying as PATCO's tactics were, they were effective. Last week the Senate Finance Committee decided to exempt the FAA from a civil service budget cutback and appropriated $15.75 million in additional funds. That will en able the FAA to staff towers with 2,750 more controllers...
...PATCO is still not pacified. It claims it will keep the pressure on until the airlines move prime-time flights into off-hours, a new jetport is agreed upon by New York, and new equipment is promised by the Federal Government. The stall is sending the airlines into tailspins. It costs $10 a minute to keep a 707 jet in the air, and pilots by contract cannot fly more than 80 hours per month. If the slowdown continues, the carriers will run out of pilots and the passengers out of patience...