Weather Forecasters at FAA ATC

[wsuffa]

Link to article

The Federal Aviation Administration yesterday gave the National Weather Service two more months to recommend how to reduce the number of meteorologists at regional air traffic control centers, effectively delaying a decision on the controversial proposal until after the Obama administration takes office.

Discuss....

 

[Everskyward]

Discuss....

I would like to know more about their job description. On the surface it would seem like it would be helpful to have a meteorologist who is familiar with the regional weather patterns on site to help ATC plan traffic flows in response to the conditions but maybe this can be done remotely. Also, when they say 4 meteorologists per center, do they mean 4 total or 4 per shift? When someone's job is about to be eliminated it's easy to bring up "safety" as a defense, but it would be nice to hear the details of both sides.

 

[KennyFlys]

Good questions, Mari. I'd like to know how they are staffed as well. According to another article I found, they want to narrow down the service from all Centers (21?) to just two locations in Maryland and Kansas City.

But, there are certainly some conflicts...

From the Post article on the 24th:

"The FAA does not require direct, face-to-face contact at each of our Air Route Traffic Control Centers," Nancy B. Kalinowski, vice president of the FAA's Air Traffic Organization, wrote in a Sept. 24 letter to Hayes. "Technology has advanced over the past decade to allow us to move away from that most costly option."

From another article with the last paragraph quoted being in significant conflict with the FAA:

The proposal was developed by the NWS in response to an FAA request to cut the cost of the CWSU program, which is funded from the FAA budget. The CWSUs were established in 1978 as a result of a recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The NTSB determined one of the major contributing factors in the Southern Airways DC-9 crash in New Hope, Ga., April 4, 1977, was the FAA’s air traffic control system’s inability to disseminate hazardous weather information to flight crews on a real time basis.

In a January 20, 2004 letter, the NTSB’s Director of Office of Aviation Safety withheld support for any plan to consolidate the CWSUs, writing that “the loss of CWSU staffing at a majority of ARTCCs, the lack of face-to-face interaction between meteorologists and controllers, and the potential for deficiencies in the timeliness of information dissemination during critical events could negatively impact safety.”

This is one of the last areas there needs to be cutbacks. There's still much we don't know about weather. Heck, how recent was it they learned to detect wind shear? And, that is still not to the safety level desired.

Further in that last article, it discusses a study showing Centers do not want to lose the CWSUs, particularly with the unique weather patterns to each individual region.

Another item I found on the NWS site describing CWSUs:
http://www.weather.gov/os/aviation/cwsu/CWSUs_1_pager.pdf

 

[bbchien]

Gad, it's everywhere. We're so much in debt we can't afford healthcare, education, infrastructure, airports, roads, FSS, Weather, approaches, QA and redundancy in our power grid, it goes on and on.

We're going to become Brazil, for pete's sake.

 

[wsuffa]

Gad, it's everywhere. We're so much in debt we can't afford healthcare, education, infrastructure, airports, roads, FSS, Weather, approaches, QA and redundancy in our power grid, it goes on and on.

We're going to become Brazil, for pete's sake.

Bu, Bu, but Bruce, we have to ADD to the TSA and DHS to make sure we're protected (from ourselves). Sigh.

Sadly, I feel that you may be right.