FAA Staffing

Improvements Needed in Estimating Air Traffic Controller Requirements Gao ID: RCED-88-106 June 21, 1988

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) standards for estimating its air traffic controller staffing requirements, focusing on: (1) whether the standards reasonably projected staffing requirements; (2) how FAA used the standards; and (3) how FAA can improve the standards and their use.

GAO found that FAA understated its staffing requirements, since: (1) its controller staffing standards did not adequately reflect work-load complexity, peak traffic conditions, actual operating conditions at terminals and centers, attrition, and training needs; and (2) it used orders rather than computer models to determine its other personnel needs. GAO also found that: (1) Congress offset the possible impact of underestimated staffing needs by authorizing more staffing than FAA requested; (2) FAA adopted the current standards in 1981, but has not yet officially published or effectively communicated them to regional and facility managers; (3) FAA regional and facility managers used their own unvalidated processes and formulas for estimating staffing needs and did not use the current standards as management tools or for productivity measures; and (4) FAA has not revalidated or updated the current standards and has not established a process for doing so.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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