Shutdown hits training, work at FAA in OKC
On the day after Christmas, some Federal Aviation Administration employees walked into the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in south Oklahoma City with an objective: stopping the work they had spent hours starting.
They canceled hundreds of contracts, issued stop-work orders, sent letters to contractors suspending
services, canceled pilot training courses and halted nearly everything else requiring federal government oversight.
“We spend thousands of employee hours stopping work, then they’re furloughed, then they come back and all of those projects have to restart. It’s a domino effect,” said Don Smith, an electronics engineer at the center and 31-year employee of the FAA who is working without pay this week.
A partial government shutdown that entered its 11th day Tuesday has left 1,146 federal employees furloughed and another 593 working without pay at the Monroney Center. Experts and union officials say work stoppages will delay training and contracts for months to come.
“It has a significant impact, even if it does end in the next week or so,” Smith said of the shutdown.
The 1,100-acre FAA facility is like a lengthy locomotive, he says. It does not stop immediately, nor does it restart efficiently. The FAA Academy there, which trains the nation’s air traffic controllers, has shut down entirely, canceling classes and sending hundreds of students home.
“It just takes longer to get someone certified now, which means we’ll have fewer certified controllers working in the field,” said Tom Adcock, a training representative with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.
That’s likely to exacerbate a nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers as the industry continues to rebound from a closure of the FAA Academy in 2013, experts say. That year, the FAA planned to hire 1,315 controllers but hired only 554. The number of controllers is now at a 30-year low.
“To be able to get ahead of that kind of attrition, you’ve got to have a functioning pipeline of hiring, training and certification,” said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. “Any kind of hiccup in that, like we’re experiencing right now, sets us back.”
When the academy closed last week, some students had just begun classes — one was in his second day — and more than 300 in the early stages of training were sent home, said Adcock, who is also furloughed.
Classes scheduled to start in the following weeks will continue to be canceled if the shutdown continues. It could then take weeks for students to return to the academy and for classes to begin again. For some, a refresher course may be necessary, delaying the classes further, union officials said.
In addition to the academy, the Civil Aerospace Medical Institute has also been shuttered. Its 125 employees manage medical exams and certifications for all U.S. pilots, processing 300,000 applications annually, according to the American Federation of Government Employees. The union expects closure to result in delays for commercial and general aviation pilots.
Local union branches have asked members to call and write to Washington, urging a solution to the 11-day-old stalemate over border security funding between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats. But there has been little budging by either side since the shutdown began Dec. 22.
At the sprawling Monroney Center campus, many buildings are empty this week, save for a security guard or two. Two employees described it as a “ghost town” operated by a “skeleton crew” of people too crucial to furlough, so they’re instead working without pay. Among those affected are a mother on maternity leave and employees on long-term sick leave, none of whom can be paid until the government reopens, according to union officials.
“There is obviously exasperation,” said Smith, who represents 330 furloughed and unpaid employees as a union representative. “It’s demoralizing. It makes the work that you do seem not important. It’s just a bad situation.”