Is efficiency always the way forward?

I've previously made my posts too long, so I'll try to make this one short!
Air Traffic Control is based on Safety, Orderly and Expeditious flow. We accept no compromise on the former, The other two come in variable amounts according to qualification, experience and sometimes even guts of the controller.
A year ago we could sustain heavy work with minimum separation between aircraft. And provide lots of direct routes on top of that. It represents a larger effort from the controller, but it's worth it. I used to save more time and money on fuel than I earned.
Then came José Blanco, decided to change everything: more hours, less rest, more traffic, less vacation, compulsory immediate attendance, less pay; all with no previous advice. The circumstance became unbearable. 70% pay reduction in my case. This obviously brought a struggle to pay bills. I'm not disputing the need for it, but surely there had to be a different way.
I personally spent five months off, on a stress related medical leave. I'm still troubled balancing my life. I would prefer to be able to focus completely on my job.
Satisfied controllers are always going to be more efficient controllers, there's no way around it.
Or is there? What will the next step be? Pay per plane per hour? Will they create a struggle to cram as many aircraft as possible into the smallest space in order to increase efficiency? What about Safety? We've just gone crazy!

EUROCONTROL

The European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation.
The European Organisation for What?
Check their website. You will probably be amazed or surprised to see that "safety" only appears -title excepted- once on the home page of the website. I'm neither.
Eurocontrol has grown from being what it probably was initially, fifty years ago, into a pressure group from aircraft manufacturers, airline operators, indeed the industry in general and even Governments, with the purpose, first and foremost, of increasing efficiency and the new great word, "sustainability".
So, what is sustainable? Whatever makes more money. No interest whatsoever in the Safety side of the sector. That's just taken for granted. The decision makers are absolutely convinced that the appearance of new technologies such as TCAS guarantees Safety. They need to look closer into this. Meanwhile, why bother, let's move on to the ultimate goal: money making. I already wrote about fuel saving: no further comment.
I can admit I'm biased. I still can't understand why buses don't have conductors. Maybe someone can prove me wrong, but has the bus travel sector gained anything from the disappearance of conductors, apart from making more money?. Where does this lead us to?. Is everything going to veer into the so called New World Order, in which more money is going to reside in fewer hands, middle classes tend to disappear and workers will see their conditions endlessly deteriorate?
Sorry for straying off from my object: Eurocontrol. Let's remember "safety" is mentioned once.
That one time refers to Safety Management. Click on it.(Activities, bottom of page). You'll eventually find :
"support to the implementation and operation of safety management systems and application of best practices in the field of human factors".

Human factors? Do I need to believe that not a single one of the workers at Eurocontrol knew of the havoc that was created by the Spanish Government last year? How many people work at Eurocontrol? Do they think there was no Safety issue whatsoever? Or perhaps, on the other hand, they thought efficiency was being pursued and presumed it would be better to refrain from acting?
Not a single word has been uttered from Eurocontrol to defend collective bargaining of working conditions and wages, abiding of Law, compliance with regulations regarding rest time, rostering practice, and many other human factor issues which have clearly affected Safety and continue to affect efficiency in the Spanish skies.
Sadly, Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, kept silent because their concern is mainly making sure everything remains efficient.
Prove me wrong. Maybe Eurocontrol spoke to my deaf ears. Send me the links or articles published by Eurocontrol to defend their safety culture in Spain last year. I really hope you can.

Arbitration: first contact

I just had a quick read through the arbitration agreement, published this morning. It’s called the II Collective Bargaining Agreement. But it’s neither collective, nor has much bargaining been included. And it certainly is not an agreement: it’s an imposition.
All the media are reporting that it means a reduction in the hours to work, now 1500. There is a provision for only 1500 to be scheduled, but different articles within the ruling also admit a maximum of 1670 hours of aeronautical activity, plus a further 40 for training, plus up to 80 for overtime. I’m pleased at finally seeing a provision for training hours. But why just 40? And furthermore, why are they further reduced, to 25 in 2012 and 20 in 2013? Is that the importance conceded to training? And the hours are even more than before.
Regarding English and it’s own training, the provision is for Aena to hand out and finance the training, which is to be carried out in one’s spare time. I haven’t yet seen if a decision has been made over controllers’ fate if their exams are failed, but I still think that all essential training for the workplace should be carried out and supervised within the workplace and considered working hours
I’ve also calculatedt how close I am to the 200.000 euros “average” yearly pay promised. From my position I should be comfortably on top of that, but according to my situation in the salary tables, I’m just about on 60 per cent of that, considering before tax numbers. Of course amidst the present crisis it’s hard to complain, but it does prove that the media campaign to demonise controllers is still going strong. And far too many lies are still being told.
It seems like there may be a large quantity of money spared by the company to use discretionally.
This was just a very speedy report. After a couple of days I’ll let you know if things are looking any less gloomy. So far it looks like it's going to be even worse than it was last year. I hope someone can prove me wrong.

The arbitrator's job

His name is Manuel Pimentel, and he’s a former Work Minister from the conservative Government of José María Aznar. He faces a tough decision. Aena (our employer) and Usca (our union) have been unable to reach an agreement after over a year of negotiation. It’s easy to say why. Basically there was some discrepancy between the different positions. The company wanted us to be slaves working h24 with resting rights cropped, and everything else subject to “the provider’s obligation to guarantee continuity of service”. This was interpreted as 100% capacity service, when everyone should know, by now, that there is a shortage of air traffic controllers in Spain.
What about the Union’s requests. If you consider that the agreements between British, French, Portuguese or German controllers were laid upon the table and Usca would accept signing any of them, it doesn’t seem like our position was too radical.
So, what’s going to happen? Will Mr Pimentel refer to before February 5th last, when the agreement between Usca and Aena was legitimate, or will he allow all the illegal Royal Decrees imposed since then to influence his final ruling?
I’m afraid the end result, whether the whole system is going to work, depends not only on this, but also upon whether Aena has enough capacity to implement the changes and comply with it’s part of the Mr Pimentel’s arbtrarion award. Personally, I feel they haven’t and things are going to be rough regardless of the arbitration outcome.

Thank Mr Blanco for the new ATM efficiency!

I’ve been working as a controller for about thirteen years. Until a couple of years ago, in Madrid (my closest example) we used to try to get as many aircraft as possible onto the left runway (shortest taxi). Until a couple of years ago all of us endeavoured to shorten routes as much as possible. Indeed, each traffic –as we say- arriving at Madrid Barajas International Airport probably saved more than ten minutes on average if we take flying and taxi time into account. I have no reason to suppose events didn’t happen likewise in the rest os Spain.
This meant a huge effort by controllers. But we are well aware that each flying minute might mean 50 kilos (or around 25 pounds sterling) of fuel. It was a time of happy crews and passengers. And we, the controllers, ended our workday with a grimace of satisfaction after a very beneficial day of work.
Since then we’ve had to read circulars about noise reduction compelling us to even out traffic between the runways, reprimands from Flow Control trying to ensure that routes are not shortened lest overcrowding occur further along the line, letters by operations managers, or even by Eurocontrol, underlining the need to attentively follow the flight plan in all of its terms.
But above everything else, we have lately had to withstand the impositions of the Minister of Development. With the intention of “optimising” the system, and failing completely to take a grasp of the basic evidence that there’s a shortage of air traffic controllers, he has imposed an increase in working hours together with a reduction in the resting periods.. He has also handed operational management to irresponsible and incompetent engineers who are incapable of changing configurations, or regulating traffic sector capacities at the right time, or giving priority to the necessary flights. On top of this, no consideration at all to human factors. Consequently, we have had overloads, delays and, worst of all, far many more near misses than before.
The ATCOs employer, Aena, enjoying the company of it’s ‘new’ bully cousin, has exerted all kinds of abuse, amongst them, disposing of workers’ days off with no previous advice. What we called the “express shifts”.
Endured we have the draconian impositions, which probably haven’t been equalled in any other civilised country in the world. But it hasn’t been without consequences. Depression and resort to tranquillisers or sleeping pills has been the norm. And the medical leaves, hundreds of them. Some for heart attacks or angina pectoris or even controllers having been stretchered out of their workplace, consciousless. Fortunately, there have been no suicides committed, as did happen in France Télécom, who had used the same consultancy company, McKinsey, as the Spanish Government.
To solve the medical leave problem (absenteeism, they called it), instead of reducing the exerted pressure, the State machinery decided to impose fines of up to 4.500.000 € for faking illness. No typing error. As you might have guessed, the workplace doctor is who’s in charge of deciding whether you’re fit or you’re pretending to be ill. He/she is paid by the same employer, Aena. The doctor has his own pressure in order to keep people at work. And you can’t even get a straightforward report immediately, you need to go through a lengthy process that involves complaining to the Head of the operations room and collecting the final report, many hours later, from the Human Resources department
Sometimes the medical service commits the atrocity of sending controllers with extremely high blood pressure back to their sectors. This isn’t the place to dispute the professionalism of doctors, but it’s a basic fact that they are unable to determine whether one is able to work; they have never seen a cotroller at work (I asked them). Their job depending on it, they would rather exert pressure upon us than the Company. Why don’t they share the responsibility if serious illness or even an airprox results from their decisions? They state that they are not under pressure to give us the thumbs up to go home, but they also express the fact that the report needs “objective parameters” and it is also complicated and five pages long!
Controllers in Spain have been struggling to cope with the pressure for over a year now. Under these circumstances, the only way to try to guarantee safety to both traffic and ourselves is to shield ourselves behind procedures and increase traffic separation, thereby hugely reducing efficiency in favour of safety.
In this environment I casually encounter an envelope in my letterbox. It contains a Eurocontrol project, called AIRE (air, in Spanish). It proposes lots of analyses of aircraft trajectories under “continuous descent”. The same idea of “free flight” created decades ago. The project’s aim is fantastic: considering that aviation contaminates, both atmospheric and acoustically, let’s enforce measures through which all pollution is reduced. Thereafter, hordes of Eurocontrol bureaucrats and technocrats involve dozens of civil servants who devote loads of hours filling in stacks of paperwork, so as to lead to multiple conferences that will show air traffic controllers the best way to do what we already did, very much more profficiently, a couple of years ago.
Controllers are well aware of what needs to be done in order to save fuel, time, noise and money. In fact, it wouldn’t be hard to prove that what has now been saved in controllers’ wages has been squandered many times over in broken shedules, crew hotels, controllers’ medical treatments, illness and leave paid for by the Social Security system and compensation to airlines for excessive fuel waste. Almost all these costs, as opposed to controllers’ pay, come from the taxpayer’s pocket. Probably, billions of euro. There is one person at the end of the responsibility chain for all this: the Development Minister José Blanco López.
And that is where I wonder: what has Mr Blanco, apart from destroying the efficiency of the Spanish Air Traffic Control System and and using the whole issue as a smoke curtain to hide all sorts of antisocial measures, achieved with all this? Ah, yes, he managed to increase the vote expectancy of the Socialist Party for a few moments.
Returning to my ecology argument, how are controllers going to be motivated and retrained now in order to get back to what we previously did quite well? When are we going to be left alone to work efficiently once again? When are these useless politicians going to admit that all this nonsense of flight fee control was absurd and inconsistent demagoguery (as well as admitting that if Airport fees are considered, they really have not been reduced at all). Honestly, will anyone change their business or holiday destination for the fifference of 20 or 30 cents in the price of their ticket?
These excesses of shortsighted and incompetent politicians have probably had the worst ever effect on one of the Spain’s most effective and reliable means of income: Tourism. I’m afraid we will all be paying the price for years to come.
Why didn’t they just state the end to be achieved and leave the pros (pilots and sontrollers) to do it?
If, on the other hand, their real intention was just to destroy the system, to make it less valuable in order to facilitate the sale to private groups, thereby diluting colossal investment errors or budget noncompliances, or just to show a pleasant face to the equally incompetent european bureaucrats, then forget all I’ve said, because from that viewpoint the job has been excellent. I just don’t understand it.
Nevertheless, I feel that citizens have the right to know that they have had their pockeys emptied for the squandering in absurd infrastructures, in budget excesses, and they’re still bearing the burden. And flights are delayed and probably not as safe. In exchange, they can feel happy because the average family is going to make a huge saving on next Summer’s holidays to Spain : exactly one euro!.

Feeling ill and the doctor's responsibility

Everyone has a bad day from time to time. I wasn’t feeling very well when I went to work today, afternoon shift. I went nevertheless, but was a bit blocked and stuffy. I usually have about one or two days like this per year, and frequently it’s on my day off.
Normally I would have an aspirin (in fact I did before leaving home) and just work through it. But during this last year I’ve seen too many incidents to be working without being 100% fit. And you must consider that in my current situation I’m not even the last person responsible for my sector, because I’me undergoing instruction in order to recover my validation after a long leave.
So, I decided to go to the workplace doctor. She’s upstairs from the operations room, less than a minute. I explained that I wasn’t feeling tiptop and she answered that she needed objective parameters. Temperature wasn’t too high, 37,2; and a visible sore throat wasn’t enough. So I had a chat and I tried to convey that the only real way to guarantee maximum safety is to make sure people who are not feeling fit on the day don’t get to work at their sector. It’s a very complicated issue, and once again the debate is upon the limits. The doctor admitted to not being able to know objectively if I had a headache or not. I didn’t, and I really just thought I should be relieved based upon not feeling very well, nothing else.
It turns out that the doctor doesn’t know what an airprox is. (You’ll excuse me for not knowing English jargon for that: literal translations from Spanish are crushing, sanding, or shoving). She has never been in the operations room. She doesn’t have a clue what our job is about. I assumed the doctors are pressurised upon to give as few leaves as possible. She denied it. Finally I stated my opinion that not everything could or should be objective: if a controller isn’t feeling fit, he/she should refrain. There are rules and fines for faking illness, but what about a headache, your dog died last night, or you exceeded yourself in the jogging and you’re sugar’s running low?. These can’t be judged objectively by simple visual examination by a doctor. But they are limiting conditions. So how should it work, because, on the other hand, I admit we can’t have workers pulling out ill whenever they want a day off (although this is a lesser evil).
In the end, the only way to organise this is to base the employer/employee relationship on confidence and good will. And throw in a couple more controllers than are needed in the shift, just in case.
By the way, I finally had high blood pressure, so I did leave for home. The doctor had to fill in five sheets of paperwork (isn’t that pressure against the leave?) and if I want my report –which I will- I have to go through a rigmarole involving the operations room Head and the Human Resources department. And I’ll get my report in a couple of days!
If you’re a controller from abroad, let me know how you do it. In comments below or to simon.a.rance@gmail.com. Thanks

English: a controversial topic

You would be excused for thinking this is as straightforward as it can get. You enter a selection process. You prove your level of English. You get selected. You study and do your training and then you have a job with great wages and you forget about your English altogether because you’re never going to be tested again.
That was so until a few years ago. Or a few months, from our point of view. ICAO (International Civil Aviation Authority) has proved that miscommunication is a key factor in many air traffic incidents and therefore has published a document (doc 9835) and a circular (318) to do it’s best to establish minimum standards for all Air Traffic Controllers and Pilots, in order to curb this serious problem. It poses the need for all personnel to pass an exam and obtain level 4 or higher out of six. It also established a deadline which nobody took any notice of. So it has now been extended, for the last time, until 5th March 2011.
This means nothing to you native English speakers out there but it causes havoc here in Spain. We currently have ATCO’s with 30 plus years’ experience who haven’t done an English refresher in the whole of their working life. Some others have. Some practise a lot, regardless of their job. About two thousand different cases. All are now required to prove their proficiency during the next month. And beware: you lose your license if you fail!
How much English is really used on the average day at work? Not much more than numbers and descriptors to indicate runway names, speeds, headings, altitudes, rates of climb or descent, departure or landing procedure names, and company or unit names. Possibly a little more may be needed to warn of bad weather or radio interference. It seldom goes any further than that.
These are the grounds for many controllers to argue that, if they have been working for a number of years and have never been involved in an incident report regarding the use of English, why shouldn’t they be validated to continue working? Precisely the opposite reasoning goes into ICAO’s effort: many people hadn’t suffered a mishap because non-routine circumstances hadn’t cropped up. The whole English debate intends to ensure that we all are ready to affront most non-routine situations
These are also the reasons that were used by National Safety Agencies to curb the previous deadline by giving all workers a provisional level 4. That’s now until March 5th next. By then, you have to hold your certificate. All you have to do is get yourself a four, then forget the whole issue for three years. Or a five and forget it for six years. A level six will allow you to bury the bastard for ever, although you have to be practically bilingual to get one. For 2000 controllers, anything could happen. But, despite claims from the Spanish ATCO Guild that our English is excellent, it doesn’t seem that absolutely everyone will keep their license. And many are scared stiff to take the exam.
All this has caught both Aena and Spanish controllers off guard. More than a year ago some of us were offered a test exam over the phone. Just a few of us actually tried it. As far as I know, nobody got any marks. Nobody knew what it was all about. Nothing else was known for months, until suddenly we received a letter from the Human Resources Director pointing out the new deadline, and it’s consequences.
So what will Aena do to the controllers who fail their test? Basically, a six months leave with progressively diminishing pay has been offered, in order to give people time to revive their languishing English and retry the test. All studying has to be done in one’s own time, although Aena has offered an online study package. If, after this you fail, you’re fired.
Bear in mind the following situation: Controller has been at the job for 35 years, had qualified for early retirement, was deprived of that by the (probably illegal and certainly immoral) Royal Decree, but could still retire in the short future, maintaining substantial wages until full retirement and State pension. He/she fails the exam a few weeks before retirement and loses it all, without ever having been offered an English refresher. Obviously unacceptable. Our reaction has been to leave the exam until the last possible moment, just in case Aena realises that it has some duty towards it’s workers.
Even the Sinister Minister has had to speak. Facing the prospect of suddenly losing all Air Traffic Services in Spain, he has filtered a project extending the validity of our English level 4 for 18 months. As a result, we will be an ICAO exception (as in many other areas). And if all our managers and politicians continue to try to enforce unacceptable measures upon us with no negotiation we are slowly but steadily going to turn into one of the most dangerous places to fly to in the world. If we’re not there already.