News & Updates2

May 19, 2010

The Honorable Byron Dorgan, Chair
Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
427 Senate Hart Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Dorgan:

On behalf of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization/AFSCME, I am writing to inform you about a policy the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is implementing that will pose serious safety problems for the flying public. The FAA is moving forward with its plan to remove human weather observers from airports around the nation who do not maintain a minimum flight count. Under this policy, the weather observing functions and responsibilities, once removed from the human weather observer, will be transferred to the already overworked air traffic controllers or left completely up to the less than ideal weather phenomena reporting of the Automated Surface Reporting System (ASOS). The impact on aviation safety may be enormous and in some cases disastrous.

Historically, the National Weather Service (NWS) has provided surface weather observations at many airports throughout the country. But then in March of 1995, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) determined NWS was responsible only for basic meteorological services provided to the public and that NWS was not responsible for specialized weather needs of individual agencies, including the aviation weather needs of the FAA.

The FAA had already determined that human augmentation and backup to the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) was required to meet the needs of some categories of aviation. Because of this OMB determination, the NWS transitioned responsibility for ASOS augmentation and backup at many sites to the FAA.

In November 1994, senior management officials from the FAA and NWS had already met with executives from fourteen national aviation associations to discuss surface aviation observation services. They reached an agreement that the government would work with the industry to define service standards for surface observations. Subsequently, a government/industry team met to assess the needs for surface observations at the nation’s airports. Their work resulted in agreement on a proposed four-level service standard (Service Level A, B, C & D) as well as on the FAA and NWS ASOS sites to which the standards would apply.

In February 1996, the service standards policy was implemented and applied to all FAA and NWS ASOS sites upon commissioning of the ASOS. As ASOS sites were commissioned, FAA and NWS observers were required to adhere to the standard for each individual site.

Today, weather observations are reported at many airports across the nation through ASOS, which requires a certified weather observer (Service Level A & B sites) to augment the observations due to the serious limitations of ASOS, in order to provide a complete, and accurate weather observation. This task of augmentation & oversight becomes more frequent during severe and rapidly changing weather conditions. Backup of the system is also required when sensors fail or the whole system is out of service. In addition, ASOS has wrongly reported (when a certified observer is not on site and able to backup/ augment) phenomena that has resulted in cancelled flights, delays and aircraft being diverted.

In 2009, the FAA removed human weather observers at the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport due to air traffic operations at the airport being reduced. It was determined that, based on the service standards set in the mid 1990’s, it was necessary to close down the human weather observation station (aka …CWO) and transfer the weather observation responsibilities to the air traffic controllers.

When any airport downgrades by going from a contract weather office (Service Level A or B) back to the air traffic controllers (Service Level C), some weather data will no longer be reported, as outlined in the service standard policy. A few of these are:

1 – Augmentation of long-line runway visual range (RVR), where appropriate
2 – Freezing drizzle versus freezing rain
3 – Ice pellets (sleet)
4 – Remarks for snow depth and snow increasing rapidly
5 – Thunderstorm & lightning data (to include type, location & movement)

6 – Observed significant weather not at the station

If a tower shuts down at night, the airport reverts to stand-alone ASOS, which is the lowest service level (Service Level D) in the current program.

The FAA continues today to implement this policy which was set in the mid-1990s around the country. We have a major concern with this line of thinking. The workload for controllers increases in adverse and quickly changing weather conditions while at the same time ASOS requires more intervention; thus, weather observations are needed more frequently. For a controller to be distracted by interfacing with ASOS to report accurate weather conditions, it would be dangerous to pilots and passengers who rely on the controller's undivided attention and safe, real-time weather information. Air traffic controllers have the important responsibility of safely directing aircraft and adding any other responsibility to this would have disastrous results.

In addition to the safety issue, this decision negatively affects the community, putting people out of work at a time the government is providing massive support to public works programs to create jobs and save
the economy. The FAA has chosen a very unsafe way to cut costs by moving the tasks of weather reporting to tower personnel.

Furthermore, it is vitally important that accurate and readily available weather information is given in the case where an aircraft has to be diverted for security reasons or during a terrorist threat. No doubt there are currently enough safety concerns involved in flying these days without adding the problem of inaccurate weather information. We strongly believe that there is no substitute for true weather observers. Serious incidents have already occurred because pilots did not receive adequate weather information.

Finally, the economy is improving and we believe that we will see an increase in flight operations from current levels. Due to removal of certified weather observers, the flying public of today may have their safety compromised as a result of this temporary decrease in flight operations. The FAA’s primary role is to ensure aviation safety – reducing, eliminating or compromising the reporting of accurate and timely weather information does not meet that priority.

We believe that Congress should demand that the FAA put a halt to this compromise of air safety and stop the implementation of this process. Please feel free to call with any questions or discussion regarding this issue. Certainly, at your convenience, I will be more than happy to meet with you and/or your representatives

Sincerely,

Jack Seddon
Executive Director