So, starting mid February, the FAA will be completely changing the way they will hire their new Air Traffic Controllers. Some of the changes are not that big of a deal, but others make me made as hell and I'm not even going for ATC, but they will affect me as a professional pilot.
My local college is a CTI school, Community College of Beaver County. Our Program was started back in the 60's by a famous astronaut and has pretty much been the same since. As part of our curriculum, all ATC students must get a pilots license, either Pvt or Rec. They must all go through Instrument ground training as well.
It is a fact, that our program is THE best in the country. The professors they have during their training are all retired Controllers. The Classes are tough on the kids, but the kids that pass have absolutely no issue once they get to OKC. In Fact, the FAA uses the CCBC students as mentors for all the other students who came from the big names schools like Embry, UND, FIT, etc. If you go to pretty much any major facility, whether it is Enroute or Terminal, more than likely there is one or more CCBC alumni there. Now I'm by no means saying that there are no good controllers/students coming out of these large name schools. There are some, but these schools have become all about making money and are pushing as many through as possible.
My Girl friend for example, her father is a supervisor at Memphis Center. He sent her here because of the reputation here, even though he did not go here. She is in the enroute program, which is the tougher of the two routes to go for ATC. Over the last couple of years, there has been only 1 person to pass the fourth semester of the enroute program in one attempt. Almost 100% of the students have to repeat it because it covers so much and is so thorough.
Like all CTI schools, students could be recommended to be put on a advanced hire list. To be eligible for this list though, the students had to have maintained a 80% or higher in all of their classes.
Our Terminal students have live controlling experience prior to them even going to Oklahoma or even being CTO certified as CCBC owns and operates their own Control Tower, at the Beaver County airport. We are the only college, two or four year, to have their own tower. It is staffed from 7AM till 9PM ever day of the year minus federal holidays by students and their supervisors. And to put things into perspective, we average over 77,000 operations per year at this airport. Which would put us in the low 20's of top 50 busiest GA airports in the US. However, we are not included as it mainly is training flights.
I work at one of the two FBO's that provide the flight training for the college. We operate 13 aircraft within the program, of which 10 are primary trainers. Our FBO alone flew over 7,500hrs with 13 aircraft, 7,000hrs of which were with the 10 primaries.
So basically, because the Race card gets so overly used in this country, the FAA had to change their ways of hiring due to a lawsuit. Over 80% of the current Air Traffic Controllers are white males. Which apparently is a bad thing. If someone has to go out and hire "Minorities" just because they have to, then that is discrimination against whoever the majority is considered. I could care less if I have a white, black, Hispanic, native American, Inuit, gay, lesbian, transgender, whatever of a controller, as long as they know what they are doing because they went through a proper training facility.
Hiring will now be conducted off the street and absolutely no preference will be given to people who have had training in the field. Theoretically, any Joe Schmo is supposed to be on a level playing field as someone who just graduated from ours or any other CTI school. The computer will however give some preference to "aviation experience", but what constitutes experience is yet to be found out. So if you have held a steady job and have gone to a college of some sort for a combination of the two for 4 years or more, you are set to apply. That college education could be in the art of clownery btw.
So now all CTI schools are more or less being made obsolete. We have already had students drop out of our program because of this and I am sure that more will do so as the semester starts next week. Today all CTI schools were having a teleconference with Washington over it.
In times of our government making irrational decisions for the aviation industry in this country such as increasing the required times to become a first officer at a Part 121 carrier by 600%, I feel this was a big slap in the face to all of the people in the industry. The system has worked for how long now? Why must we change everything because a few people want to pull the race card and file a lawsuit?
So what are your opinions on the FAA hiring Change?
Here is more on the changes
http://www.natca.org/about.aspx?zone=About%20NATCA&pID=241
