Changes to FAA error measurements spark questions

In the wake of an Office of Special Counsel report that revealed Federal Aviation Administration managers covered up significant errors at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, FAA and the air traffic controllers union disagree about whether a new tracking system accurately conveys the number of serious mistakes controllers make.

The union argues that the new system underreports serious errors, giving a misleading impression that aviation is getting safer even as the workload increases and controllers retire. But the FAA says the changes were intended to make reporting more fair to controllers and to avoid recording minor deviations as major mistakes.

In a Nov. 13 letter to President Bush, Acting Special Counsel William Reukauf said OSC had confirmed whistleblowers' allegations that FAA managers at the Dallas-Fort Worth terminal radar approach control (TRACON) facility were underreporting errors by misclassifying them as mistakes by pilots or as less serious incidents. A report by the Transportation Department inspector general found that between November 2005 and July 2007, 62 errors were misidentified in this fashion.

FAA says the incidents in Dallas appear to be an aberration, but the National Air Traffic Controllers Association says it has questions about an agencywide change in procedures for measuring and reporting errors.

"They changed the way they classify errors," said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. "They wanted to be able to change the field and get people to think errors were going down when they just stopped counting them the same way."

FAA moved to the new error tracking system in fiscal 2008. Previously, mistakes that allowed planes to fly too close together were ranked on an A-to-D scale, with A being the most serious. Those rankings were determined by filling out a worksheet, a process FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said left room for subjectivity.

The new system determines the degree of errors on an A-to-C scale by measuring how close planes came to one another in the air. FAA created a fourth category, "proximity events," in which planes fly closer than allowed, but by such small distances that strong winds or measurements on radar screens could be the cause.

"We were trying to set a similar margin for the controllers as the one we have for pilots, recognizing that humans aren't perfect, and it's difficult for a human eye on a radar screen," Brown said. "We count them, and we still record them, and we still study them, but it doesn't count as operational error."

Under the old system in fiscal 2007, FAA recorded 624 A and B operational errors, the two most serious categories. That came in below the limit of 655 operational errors in those categories the agency had set for the year, meeting the performance goal. In fiscal 2008, the agency recorded 342 operational errors in the redesigned A and B categories, 14 more than the cap of 328 FAA had set, but still far below the number of serious errors reported under the old categories.

NATCA's Church said the agency's pay-for-performance system created institutional and individual incentives to underreport errors, something Brown vigorously disputed.

"We have looked at other TRACONs around the country to see if we found issues similar to what they found at the Dallas-Forth Worth TRACON, and we have not found any similar patterns," she said. Brown also said FAA adopted all of OSC's recommendations and the entire management team at the facility was replaced in January, though she could not discuss personnel actions against certain managers.

"It's vindication," Church said. "But once it came out, it was pretty clear that they determined that our members properly reported the errors and operational deviations … But this is obviously a very damning report for management, and they've been properly disciplined, it appears."