Key excerpts from Mica:

GOP: FAA should use more private resources for ‘NextGen’

The Federal Aviation Administration should seek more private money to build a new air traffic controller system, Republicans on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said Friday.

*Touting a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) saying that the FAA has not been completely successful “leveraging the research and technologies of its partners,” Committee Chairman Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said the agency should do more to garner support among private companies.

“Given current budget constraints, it is critical that FAA maximize resources available through interagency and private sector partners for development of NextGen,” Mica said in a statement.

“The private sector nearly always performs better than government and can more effectively manage transition efforts like NextGen,” he continued. “The FAA should do all it can to leverage private sector capital and innovation in this critical infrastructure enhancement project.”

The FAA has long planned to switch the air traffic control system from radar technology that has been used since World War II to a satellite-based system. However, lawmakers cut about $200 million from the FAA’s budget that would have gone to the conversion this spring as they were working on a deal to avert a government shutdown this spring. (emphasis added)

What’s kind of interesting is that you might go and read the GAO report. If you did (and we did), you’d find that the report doesn’t say a single thing about private money, resources, or budget issues. It does say that technology and research transfers are not always effective; it does say that program goals are not identified; and it does say that internal budget processes do not allow for specific tracking of NextGen-specific costs.

The GAO report doesn’t say anything that supports Mica’s comments or The Hill’s headline. Take a look at the way they palmed the pea in the second paragraph, which starts with the word “Touting”.

Foundations are good at position papers and general themes, but are not known for effective prediction. (Not that anybody else is good at prediction either.) While we are loathe to prognosticate, here’s a thought:

Watch the upcoming debt-ceiling and budget Kabukis and look for the point at which some thoughtful quisling suggests, “Golly, instead of treating NextGen ATC like a cost that burdens the taxpayer, why don’t we solicit competitive bids from industry to see who will pay the most to operate the ATC system? Let’s move away from a taxpayer-funded, legacy cost-center perspective, and move into an industry-funded, profit-center paradigm. Gosh!”

The Privatization of the American Space Program

When the last shuttle lands, the NASA shuttle program will go from 15,000 employees down to 3,000. In another six months, it drops to 1,000 employees. After a year, the number dwindles down to a few people.

The next vehicles that the United States will use to move beyond the atmosphere will be supplied by private contractors. In the short-term we are contracting with the Soviet Union Russian oligarchy for spacelift, and in a few years America will contract with vendors whose names you’d recognize: Lockheed-Martin, Boeing. (Allow us to point out that these are multi-national corporations.)

Nothing stays the same. Every chapter begins and ends; there are winners and losers.

As a species and as a country, we know a lot of things. Amidst the negentropy and the explosive growth of knowledge, we can’t keep track of everything we know. When you can’t keep inventory, you lose a bit every year.

For instance, we no longer have the knowledge (or the capability) of landing men on the moon and bringing them back alive. We decided to close that chapter, and we decided not to invest in maintaining that capability. We can’t do it anymore; if we wanted to send somebody up there now, we’d have to begin a new chapter.

The United States has privatized our space program. NASA will award and administer contracts. The new knowledge won’t reside in NASA and neither will the intellectual property; the know-how will move from the government (of, for, by the people) to the corporations. What was once knowledge that benefited mankind will become proprietary IP assets that corporations will exploit as rentiers.

In ten years our government won’t be able to do space programs. We’ll have fired the people, closed the books, and sent the artifacts to museums. We’ll have outsourced the business and lost the knowledge. If our national interest requires unilateral activity in space, we’ll be wholly dependent on the willingness of corporations. They’ll set the price if it doesn’t conflict with their own priorities.

Right now, the Air Forces’s LockMart contractors are whipsawing the FAA’s LockMart contractors in seeking more money to accomplish the heralded promise of NextGen. LockMart is playing government agencies and programs against each other to run up the bill and maximize optimize profits funding.

When the United States becomes dependent on a vendor to conduct space operations, what will happen when the same multinational Corporation is also providing contract services to another country?

When the Russians launched Sputnik, Bob Hope quipped that “all this proves is that their German scientists are better than our German scientists…”. Perhaps in the next nation-vs-nation conflict, we’ll find out if our LockMart contract is better than their LockMart contract.

Flight Service and Rocket Science

The Foundation is confident that just prior to the privatization of Flight Service, some confidently pronounced “they’ll never shut this down”. We are similarly confident that after LockMart took the work, Center and Terminal controllers confidently said, “Okay sure, Flight Service, but they’ll never shut my facility down”.

They just outsourced another inherently governmental function and tossed 15,000 highly trained, technical professionals away to provide a labor pool for the contractors. They’ve dismantled the world’s best program in its field. They’ve literally outsourced rocket science. Once they take it apart, they’ll never be able to reassemble the original system again.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls . . . .

To Mr. Jonathan Gaffney, President, National Aeronautic Assoc.
cc: NAA Staff and Board
Subj An Open Letter re NAA’s Cliff Henderson Award to Marion Blakey

Dear Mr. Gaffney,

We were truly dismayed to read on AvWeb that the National Aeronautic Association has seen fit to recognize Marion Blakey as the recipient of NAA’s Cliff Henderson Award.

As you know, in 1960 the NAA clarified the award as a honored recognition of “a living individual… whose vision, leadership or skill made a significant and lasting contribution to the promotion and advancement of aviation and aerospace in the United States.”

NAA lists the previous honorees, and when we look at the roster it is an impressive list of distinguished people, and their consistent attributes are courage, integrity, and leadership. The honor roll includes Crossfield, LeMay, Link, Cochran, Borman, White, Lindberg, Doolittle, Gann, Robertson, and Poberezny.

Cliff Henderson’s history and work in the National Air Races, the Bendix Trophy, and the development of LAX have left a lasting imprint on American aviation. We are all the beneficiaries of Cliff Henderson’s efforts.

People do remarkable things in aviation. The machines and devices are incredible, but the equipment is only the artifacts conceived and wrought by the people of aviation. People – not machines, not corporations – have made American aviation what it is.

Aviation is where we are today because we stand on the shoulders of such giants as the previous recipients of the Cliff Henderson award, each of whom understood and respected the value and dignity of their aviation colleagues.

Given that, we are puzzled at NAA’s decision to honor Marion Blakey. Blakey’s legacy at FAA is one of deprecating and diminishing people, trampling the spirit of aviation, and prioritizing corporations and money over people and vision. In Blakey’s FAA tenure we see no courage, no integrity, and no leadership.

The list that Marion Blakey does belong on would include Frank Lorenzo, Carl Icahn, Mayor Daley, Joe Miniace, Jack Whitehead, James Farley, the Bergoff Brothers, Nathan Shefferman, and Martin Jay Levitt. Blakey’s name does not belong on the NAA’s list of worthy prior recipients.

What Ms. Blakey has done and what she chooses to do (currently CEO at AIA, Aerospace Industries Association) is not any fault of NAA. But when you decide to honor her and when you commingle NAA’s name with hers, then NAA is embracing and endorsing her philosophy, history, and legacy.

Marion Blakey’s legacy is the elevation of corporations and money over people and vision. Would anybody say, Cliff Henderson was the Marion Blakey of his time? We think not.

Finally, let’s compare the award criteria and Blakey’s accomplishments.
    a living individual (pass)
    vision, leadership or skill (fail)
    significant and lasting contribution (fail)
    promotion and advancement of aviation (fail)
    in the United States. (pass)
Being a living American is Blakey’s sole qualification for this award.

In a world with Sullenberger, the Rutan brothers, Kelleher, Garvey and Branson, NAA’s voluntary choice to align with Marion Blakey is inexplicable and does a disservice to NAA’s character and history.

We believe that NAA has not fully considered this nominee, or may have been misinformed or rushed in the vetting. Please do not cast this unfortunate shadow over the honorable accomplishments of Cliff Henderson.

Hopefully,
The Praxis Foundation

Email info:
To: jgaffney@naa.aero
cc: marion.blakey@aia-aerospace.org,angie.youngen@aia-aerospace.org, awgreenfield@naa.aero, nsack@naa.aero, cbosco@naa.aero, wboyne@gmail.com, george.carneal@hoganlovells.com, alexis.allen@aia-aerospace.org, david.coleal@aero.bombardier.com, jlangford@aurora.aero, dfranson@wichitaaeroclub.org, joe.lombardo@gulfstream.com, mary.miller@signatureflight.com, henryo@nasao.org, steve.plummer@rolls-royce.com, President@ninety-nines.org, info@discovery-partners.com, velocci@aviationweek.com, robert.j.vilhauer@boeing.com

An excellent opinion essay by Matt Stoller, Public Pays Price for Privatization.

Matt Stoller worked on the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and Federal Reserve transparency issues as a staffer for Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.). He is currently a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.

Freeloading, Investment and Justified Exploitation: When does a free service become an obligation?

Tuesday of the second week, you wake up, the birds are chirping and the car horns are honking, and you realize that you’ve overslept. You look out the window, there’s the cat-clock with scaffolding around it and they’re working on the mechanism. The chimes haven’t gone off since just after you went to bed.

You call work, they’re mad and say “your supe will talk to you when you get here”, what a PITA, and you’re rushing out the door to minimize the damage. Damned KitCatClock! It’s their fault!

Is it really their fault, or is it your own fault for relying on somebody else without any basis that makes your expectation reasonable?

Did you ever pay for, or contribute to, the clock? Did the company ever commit to provide you a service? If you’re taking the benefit (just like listening to but not sponsoring NPR, or piggybacking your neighbor’s WiFi) without contributing or establishing stakeholder status, does the clock company assume a responsibility to provide a service? Are they obligated to maintain the clock indefinitely for your benefit?

Has the advertising company taken on a liability to ensure you can use their clock? Do you have standing to even say anything about this?

They seem like silly questions, a contrived situation whipped into a ridiculous conclusion, but it may illustrate a few points about NextGen.

The entire infrastructure basis for NextGen is complete reliance on the United States’ NavStar global navigation satellite system (GNSS), our network of GPS satellites. Russia is developing GLONASS, China is developing Compass, and Europe is developing Galileo. These are competitive, non-complementary systems.

Operationally, the NextGen ATC system is completely reliant on GPS. No GPS, no NextGen. Financially, the only way they can cost-justify NextGen is to stop maintaining the buildings and roofs and the power supplies at the thousands of legacy ground stations. NextGen puts all our eggs in the GPS basket.

There are concerns with a system completely dependant on GPS satellites. Satellites fail, they’re hard to troubleshoot and replace, sunspots affect them, and the Chinese seem to be able to shoot them down. And there’s another thing: the radio signal from the satellite in orbit (20k miles up) to an airplane’s GPS receiver is pretty weak. That radio signal is not nearly as strong as a signal sent from a (legacy, ground-based) VOR. It becomes very important that nothing interfere with the faint GPS radio signal.

This becomes interesting and possibly arcane. From Wikipedia:

In January 2011, the FCC approved a wireless broadband network by the Virginia company LightSquared, to be operational in 92 percent of the United States by 2015. This approval came despite concerns by GPS equipment manufacturers that the network signals could interfere with GPS. The FCC believed LightSquared would not cause problems.

One problem was equipment designed to receive weak signals from satellites; LightSquared had up to 40,000 ground-based transmitters whose signals would be much stronger. According to the AOPA, airline pilots “may go off course and not even realize it.”

The problems could also affect the Federal Aviation Administration upgrade to the air traffic control system, United States Defense Department guidance, and local emergency services including 911.

The FCC, which is in charge of spectrum assignments, has issued LightSquared a license to operate metropolitan wifi-type radios across America. LightSquared intends to transmit using 32 decibel/watts (dBw) of power per channel, although the FCC has authorized them to use 42 dBw. Let me emphasize that this isn’t a vaporware proposal; this is an authorized, approved project scheduled for implementation in 92% of American cities by 2015.

Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RTCA)

The RTCA is the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics, and if there was a shadow force in American aviation it would be RTCA. RTCA is paid for by FAA, but RTCA is organized as a private corporation and, as such, its work is not authoritative or transparent.

What’s kind of interesting is that while the NextGen aviation industry is working on the FAA to “fix” the LightSquared issue (by making it go away), in fact the FAA is not in charge of spectrum allocation – the FCC is in charge. The fact that the FAA has tolerated/advocated aviation use of low-powered, weak-signalled satellite systems without adequate protection is not necessarily a problem for the FCC. (In other words, failure to plan on FAA’s part is not necessarily a crisis for FCC.) The FCC has given LightSquared permission (license) to proceed.

When Industry sold NextGen to the FAA, they convinced FAA to exploit and rely on the GPS system somebody else paid for and maintained (the clock down the street) as the basis for a leading-edge, no backup, national safety system.

In the LightSquared instance, RTCA and FAA are protesting to the FCC about the loss of somebody else’s (ie, DoD) big and free alarm clock, which RTCA-FAA-NextGen never paid for, invested in, or subscribed to. It’s interesting to note that DoD is not complaining.

This is a political question, and the solution will involve politics and sufficient transfers of public funds to make everybody happy – because LightSquared is a law-abiding American company.

Here is the dog that did not bark:

Parenthetically, some people have made millions speculating on FCC spectrum decisions.

What’s a story? A story is a narrative that informs, entertains, teaches or persuades. A story doesn’t have to be factual, but it needs to be believable, and there is a world of mischief in the gap. The two biggest factors in an audience’s acceptance of a story are (1) the willing suspension of disbelief, driven by the skill and trust of the story-teller, and (2) the credibility of the authorities cited.

Let’s analyze a story in the Wall Street Journal by Andy Pasztor, called “A New Era of Self-Control“.

Mr. Pasztor is an honorable reporter who generally gets his story right, which is to say that his narratives are usually aligned with truth. We have no beef with Mr. Pasztor.

Stories generally begin by establishing context (Once Upon A Time, In A Galaxy Far Far Away) and by immediately identifying villains, heroes, and their conflict. Look for those components in the story we’re about to analyze.

The audience is inclined to suspend disbelief because the WSJ is a well-respected newspaper, Mr. Pasztor is a legitimate non-partisan reporter, and the authorities quoted in the story are highly placed officials. For the purpose of this exercise, please hang on to your disbelief for a few extra moments.

We have edited for length, and we have color-coded positive and negative phrases to see if the story has discernible bias. Please read the original to keep us honest, and expect a short quiz.

Minor Quibbles

• the only activity that succeeds by allowing people to drive impromptu routes and ensure their own spacing is called “bumper cars”. There is no precedence, anywhere in the world, for these claims.
• NextGen promises to increase capacity by reducing separation in some situations, but the constraining factor is runway capacity – which NextGen does not address.
• The story presents datalinks as an upgrade from radios. Datalinks are radios, they’re just not voice channels. At one time “wireless” referred to Marconi’s invention.
• Pasztor posed an excellent question, but permitted a soft non-sequitur that wasn’t really an answer.
  

  How can still-untested technology… guarantee such huge gains? [Because] the FAA seeks nothing less than to turn the traditional relationship between pilots and controllers on its head

Follow-Up Quiz

How does the article describe air traffic controllers?
Snoozing
Vulnerable humans
The Ultimate Safety Net
Dozing off on duty
Facing sharp cutbacks
Doomed to a diminished future of monitoring rather than controlling planes
All of the above

Who is advocating NextGen and the changed role of controllers?
      Ray LaHood and Randy Babbitt     

What authorities in this story support industry’s NextGen claims?
Industry Officials
Controllers from around the nation
Ray LaHood and Randy Babbitt

What kind of story is this?
A news story reporting an objective, observable event.
An objective story reporting justified truths
A story of claims backed by evidence
A subjective tale of a possible future involving great fortunes.

Why would this good reporter take industry claims at face value?
   Because public experts  -  LaHood, Babbitt – vouch for them    

Why would Lahood and Babbitt do that?
   Because NextGen was a  (Bush)  Flight Plan Goal before they arrived.    

What conclusion(s) can you draw from this story?

• Leadership is in the tank for NextGen, and they’re selling a reduced ATC role to the public as a good thing.
• So much for a Just Culture.
• We are building a database of controller foibles for people committed to reducing the role of controllers.

If we were king, what would the reporter do next?
If we were king, we would ask Mr. Pasztor to return to the essential question:

It’s an excellent question. The answer is: It can’t.   NextGen doesn’t scale. There is no example or evidence to support the success of NextGen’s promised benefits at the scale of the domestic US aviation system.

Salesmen, Shills and Quislings

There are several types of salesmen.

• There are plain and simple salesmen who overtly try to induce people to exchange money for the product.
• There are barkers who use crowd psychology to sell the product to individual people
• There are touts who promote a product without disclosing that they are being paid to do so.
• There are claques, undeclared cheerleaders placed among the people
• There are shills, covert salesmen who appear as reliable, independent experts to the unsuspecting people.
• There are quislings, insiders who perversely sell their people to the product

Extra Credit Fill in the blanks:

                      Robert Poole                                  is a tout.

       The  contractors occupying   our jobs          are claques.

            Russ  Chew  and  Marion   Blakey            are shills.

             Ray  LaHood  and  Randy  Babbitt                are quislings.

The best distraction, of course, is the double-whammy — something that removes the focus from an activity that one prefers to downplay, while moving the public focus to a change in perspective that serves the ultimate goal. It’s a two-fer.

Maybe we’ve seen this in the recent past: a defocusing of NextGen Towers along with a simultaneous PR campaign denigrating the air traffic controller that sits up in the tower.

One of the main concerns of our Foundation has been the role of the government contracting industry in introducing Virtual Towers, both staffed and unstaffed. The nomenclature has been updated to “Nextgen Towers”, which can still be purchased in both staffed and unstaffed versions.

We see the introduction of NextGen Towers as industry’s technique to move traditional on-site, OTW (out-the-window) FAA tower controllers to remote mega-facilities staffed by contractors, not unlike Lockheed-Martin’s six Flight Service facilities. This will result in the outsourcing of one-third of the terminal option.

We believe this is the primary threat to the future of the profession.

Some believed this risk had diminished, although the projects remained active in the Flight Plan, the budget, and the updated planning documents.

John Croft brings us Dissecting NextGen: a look inside the NIEC, a bit of boosterism that is nevertheless informative.

Ongoing or completed projects demonstrate the capabilities much better than any brochure. This summer the NIEC will continue testing of an FAA project to determine what tools controllers would need to someday “man” control towers from remote locations. During two simulation sessions, investigators and engineers have progressively built the technologies and procedures that are part of the “staffed next generation tower” project.

For decades OJT instructors told their trainees, “Look out the window”.
Turns out they were wrong.

QUESTION Is Lockheed Martin Flight Service a Failure or a Success?
ANSWER It depends — on your perspective.

• Pilot Perspective: FAILURE
• Controller Perspective: FAILURE
• Congressional Perspective: SUCCESS
• Taxpayer Perspective: SUCCESS
• Lockheed-Martin Perspective: SUCCESS
• Outsourcing Industry Perspective: SUCCESS
• Investor Perspective: SUCCESS

Let’s examine ATO, the Air Traffic Organization. ATO is the American ANSP.

The Air Traffic Organization was created by President Clinton to introduce business practices to the delivery of air traffic services. It was an early cornerstone of Al Gore’s Reinventing Government (REGO), and it was generally understood that ATC reform would be a showcase exhibit for Al Gore’s reelection.

Then came Bush vs. Gore in the Supreme Court.

The ATO design and the ATO goals were developed in 2001 by political appointees of the Bush administration until they were interrupted by 9/11. Implementation by the Bush administration resumed in the post-9/11 atmosphere of 2003.

Russ Chew, a former American Airlines pilot and system operations manager, was hired as Chief Operating Officer. Chew left in February 2007 to take a position with JetBlue, and is now employed by NextGen financiers.

Bobby Sturgell, who came from the air traffic ranks, was acting COO until former United Airlines pilot Hank Krakowski took the position. Krakowski resigned under pressure in April 2011, and the senior attorney is now in an acting capacity.

It’s been over ten years since the initial concept was introduced. If the question is, “Is ATO a success or failure?” the answer is, “It depends on your perspective. What was the intent of ATO? What was it supposed to do?“.

• If the ATO introduction was supposed to accomplish the Clinton administration’s vision – creating a more effective, pragmatic, responsive, operational, business-like structure (and electing Al Gore) – then it may be a failure.

• If the ATO design and implementation was supposed to accomplish the Bush administration’s vision – to distinctly separate and package the interwoven ATC functions in order to facilitate moving the activity to the
  outsourcing industry

  – then it may be an imminent success.

PR Feeding Frenzy

Let’s recognize and identify the game that we’re well into. There’s advertising and there’s public relations. Advertising is paying to have your message carried to the public. Public relations is inducing other people (reporters, politicians, and entities of various agenda’s) to carry your message for their own reasons.

Why would the outsourcing industry spend the money that this sort of public relations campaign requires? Because it lowers the cost they’ll have to pay to get the contracts through other means.

In any operation, events happen all the time which nobody wants to see on the front page. These events are persistent, unfortunate things which generally don’t do any harm, which outsiders would find appalling, and which will not look good in the bright light of sustained scrutiny.

If you want to target the status quo in any industry, all it takes is identifying the known/persistent/unfortunate events, waiting for and selecting a really juicy one to commence with, and then maintaining the buzz with the steady stream of events that you know will occur – because they’ve been occurring for years.

Pick a good startoff event and make sure that nobody misses the guaranteed subsequent events, and other people will do your work for you because it meets their needs. A reporter that needs one more story to file? A politician that needs to strike a certain tone with the voters back home? A consultant who needs to build visibility? A think-tank that has a fellow-traveler labor/economic/policy agenda? A PR feeding frenzy develops, with multiple predators (each with their own goals) joining in. Standard stuff.

The defense against an adverse PR campaign is to fill the space between the routine, negative events with positive stories of heroic and virtuous activity, to call attention to the opponent’s weaknesses, and to shift the media momentum into a favorable direction. That’s not happening.

Meanwhile, we keeping hiring airplane drivers to be in charge of ATC (which is a bit like hiring waiters to be nutritionists), and private industry keeps hiring people with decades of air traffic control experience. Guess who’s going to win that competition?

And now the media focus is on You. It’s been You for a month, there isn’t any obvious end in sight, and your budget and legislation for next year is currently in the works. Ask yourself, who profits from this PR campaign?

Quick hints: There are companies that sell automated air traffic services that never sleep (google: “unstaffed nextgen / automated virtual towers”). There is an industry of corporate ATC providers that get incredible productivity, never report any errors, and don’t quibble about “fatigue mitigation”.

Go back to 1981 and look at the public relations campaign of the union busters. The PATCO controllers were repeatedly described as overpaid, pampered, insatiable egomaniacs who were out of touch with the nation that overpaid them. Sound familiar?

Bond / Poole join the feeding frenzy

In today’s Wall Street Journal, we see Why Air Traffic Controllers Fall Asleep on the Job. The subtitle, which is all that people who read by scanning will observe, explains “They [controllers] have the last word on their work schedule, including the notorious 2-2-1.”

Got that? Bad controller. b-a-d c-o-n-t-r-o-l-l-e-r.   BAD.

Langhorne Bond is a former FAA Administrator who now works for an aviation consulting group.

Robert Poole is a think-tank shill. His wikipedia page says,

Reason Foundation founder Robert Poole “is credited as the first person to use the term ‘privatization‘ to refer to the contracting-out of public services…

The Bond-Poole polemic presents various reasons for why the controllers are bad and why the organization is worse for indulging them, but the money quote is at the very end. Wait for it, wait for it …

The current controller-fatigue flap is actually a wake-up call. For NextGen to succeed, we need an independent aviation safety regulator. And that means we must separate the Air Traffic Organization from the FAA

Translation of Bond/Poole:

I don’t think that Bond/Poole are really interested in debasing air traffic controllers. They do, however, profit from NextGen sales, and NextGen is in trouble. In jumping on the bandwagon and advancing their own agenda, Bond/Poole are also doing the work of the real enemy, the outsourcing industry that started this brouhaha.

The opening moves of a good game include feints and head fakes, proxies and pawns, and then, as the contest progresses, the real players slowly rise out of the cloud of battle. If they’re really good, they never have to engage in battle themselves at all. (To subdue your opponent without fighting is the acme of skill Sun Tzu.)

NextGen is not our enemy. There are implications in the implementation that really matter, false promises have been made in the sales pitch, nobody knows who’s paying for it and that’s an issue, but NextGen is not the enemy.

Also:
Ain’t Nothin’ Privatization Can’t Fix
GOP to use sleeping controllers to push for privatization
And Nobody Gives a Damn
One Nation Under Contract – Six Questions

We recently saw events at two locations. Political leadership focused on overnight shifts. Anybody familiar with the Hawthorne Effect or the Heisenberg Uncertainty will accept that when you choose to emphasize things, you cause unintended changes.

After the new emphasis, problems arose in at least three locations. We may be seeing what the experts said all along: you cannot put one person alone in a dark, humming room overnight, on a schedule that makes things worse, give them very little to do for prolonged periods, banish the FM radio, and then expect high-level cognitive performance in matters of life and death.

We have been running the midnights on the cheap, minimizing the complexity for mutual convenience, and expecting machine performance from human beings. We were getting away with it for a long time.

The common practices in the field result in schedules that by design introduce fatigue, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and a decreased life expectancy. The IARC, the World Health Organization cancer experts, lists overnight work as a probable carcinogen. It’s called the graveyard shift for a reason. If you wanted to kill somebody slowly, you’d put them on a controller schedule.

Here’s a comment from the AvWeb forum: Thirty years an airline pulot, 10 years a military pilot, 5 years a corporate pilot, 18 years in the air since that and anyone that says he/she has never nodded off between midnight and sun-up is lying, including all the desk jockeys in DC. It happens.

There are (at least) three forms of hypocrisy in the midnight controversy: internal/organizational, internal/labor, and external/predator.

It is hypocritical for a safety organization to ignore the last 40 years of research. They should design schedules within the existing body of human factors knowledge, rather than mindlessly adhering to the forty-hour per week concept. The third shift is not just another dayshift. People may need to call off if they aren’t rested. There are budgetary and staffing costs associated with doing it right. Doing it on the cheap doesn’t seem to be working.

You can learn a lot about people by observing them under stress. Look at the political Leadership’s response; is it rational or affective? Randy Babbitt said that “as a former airline pilot, I am personally outraged”.

Although Babbitt is enraged at the controllers, it is his ATO that sets the schedule and staffing levels. Ray LaHood says that controllers asleep in airport towers [is] very disturbing and vows the problem “will not stand on my watch.”

They are shocked, shocked and enraged to find gambling in the casino, and these angry people are leading the just culture movement.

An honorable response would be, “This is my own fault. We schedule the people this way; experts tell us not to; the union asks us not too; a few years ago we told them they can’t even play the radio. We told them they’re can’t call off if they’re fatigued. We’re going to fix this.” Instead they offer up Hank as a fall guy and back themselves into a corner; now they’re on record saying it’s unacceptable for anybody to ever doze on a midnight, when in fact that is exactly what the experts recommend.

If it is wrong for the organization to schedule people without regard for circadian best practices, it is also hypocritical for people who live in the schedule to annually negotiate more of the same because we like the way the weekends work.

It is short-sighted for people to swap their shifts and create conditions that are unhealthy and inconsistent with best practices. It is a foolish machismo that looks at an abusive schedule and says, “I can do that, and I can take even more” and then self-inflicts more abuse in order to make tee times.

An AWS controller works a 1200-2200; has eight hours off to go home, rest, and return; and reports for a 0600 to 1600. Who wants to wager on their performance at 1500 on the second day, working with 8 hours rest in 28 hours? Does it matter if it’s assigned or swapped?

Finally, the external/predator hypocrisy. Midnight snafus have been happening since forever. Why are they getting persistent media focus now? Who profits? Who provides the shocked experts that provide media quotes and insider insights? The people who sell NextGen Towers, where nothing can go wrong, are profiting from this dialogue.

Our problem is not unique and solutions have been developed by other professions dealing with similar situations. Consider the reserve airline pilot or the on-call radar technician; there are ways to do this.

The resolution will require wisdom and discipline from both sides. The future of the profession demands no less.

Things are about to come to a head. Not everyone will find the ending they hoped for; people will be disappointed. When a big deal goes wrong the focus moves from fixing the problem to fixing the blame. When the sharks switch to damage control mode, they seek a “fall guy” to take the rap.

The plan is that the fall guy goes down and the sharks move on to seek other fortunes and paydays, unencumbered by any accountability for their actions. It’s never good to be the fall guy.

In The Maltese Falcon (1931), Dwight Frye portrays Wilmer Cook, a thug who doesn’t quite comprehend the forces around him. As the situation deteriorates, the sharks cast about for a fall guy, and Wilmer Cook is selected.

A major deal that goes wrong needs a fall guy. Sometimes it’s the actual villian. Sometimes it’s a low-level player set up to protect others. When there’s fortunes involved, and things go south, expect a fall guy to be found.

Look at the Advanced Automation System (AAS) debacle. IBM was the AAS fall guy. The other sharks moved away and transitioned into LORAL, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. Today’s ERAM project is just another round at the AAS pinata.

NextGen is another Maltese Falcon. There are expectations and politics. People project their desires onto NextGen’s ambiguity, and hitch their wagons to NextGen. Powerful companies have invested in this. Airlines were told it will save them a fortune. The big sharks have agreed that there’s enough to go around, and the little sharks are looking for the pieces that fall to them.

If there are problems, who’s going to be the NextGen fall guy?

Here’s a few quotes from an August 2010 article, American Flight Uses a Firm’s Satellite-Based Landing System, by Christine Negroni-

“But airline officials say progress has been too slow. American, Southwest, Alaska Airlines and others have trained their pilots to fly R.N.P. procedures, and about 80 percent of United States airliners have the equipment to do so, the F.A.A. says. Still, the approaches are in use at only a small fraction of American airports. Their use abroad varies from country to country.

“Four years ago, Naverus, which has been setting up satellite-based systems for airlines and airports worldwide, offered to create an R.N.P. approach at Bradley Airport and give it to the F.A.A. for use by any airline that wanted it. ….

“We would talk to people at the top of the F.A.A., and they were completely 100 percent on board with what we need to do,” (Naverus executive Steve) Fulton said. “But they had to communicate that to a complex bureaucracy so everyone had the same vision.”

Naverus was founded by Steve Fulton, a pilot at Alaska Airlines in 1994 who helped create the first R.N.P. routes. His startup was bought out by GE Aviation. Although they’ve got a low profile, General Electric is a big shark. Did you know GE is in the ATC business?

Naverus is the first and currently only organization recognized as an RNP Approval Consultant. “This announcement is an excellent example of how FAA and the private sector can work together to accelerate the environmental and economic benefits NextGen will bring,” said Marion Blakey, President and CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association. “We have high expectations this can lead to real, near-term improvements for airlines, passengers and the FAA alike,” she said.

Christine Negroni (CN), the author of that article, keeps the transcript of her interview with Steve Fulton (SF) online. She opens with a softball,

CN: I wondered if the real navigational challenge wasn’t airspace as much as dealing with a bureaucracy like the FAA. which has such a huge people intensive, technology- intensive…
SF: Right, recognizing that our challenges aren’t so much technical they’re more on the human, management of change process through human organizations…..

SF: The FAA, if you talk to people at the top of the FAA they are completely 100% onboard with all of the things we know we need to do. … They have the challenge of communicating that down through a very complex bureaucracy so everybody at all the levels and all the work groups have the same understanding of the technology and the same vision and kind of where we’re going and so it’s a bigger challenge than a simpler country with less infrastructure.

CN: Is Naverus’ goal to take over and become the airspace infrastructure provider like Lockheed does for flight services?
SF: Our goal, and this is what we’re communicating to the FAA and to the community right now is to offer our services to the FAA and we expect we will work alongside existing FAA resources. … The message that we’re communicating today is we’re ready; we’re here to bring commercial private enterprise resources into the work because we understand it’s going to be quite massive.

SF: Look at it from an airline perspective, their understanding that there’s going to be significant investment in airborne equipment to be able to participate in this upgraded air space and as they make those investments they want to make sure there’s a return on what they’ve invested.

What’s happens if there is no significant ROI? NextGen advocates have told the airlines, “If you buy this, you will profit”. What happens if there is no fabulous Maltese Falcon?

What did Marion Blakey say? We have high expectations this can lead to real, near-term improvements

Who is Steve Foster nominating for the fall guy? To paraphrase, It’s not technical, it’s a people problem. Headquarters gets this. It’s the field and the bureaucracy that’s holding us back. Naverus is ready to go!

The fall guy they’re nominating are the change resistant, unionized, overpaid, government LastGen field operations people. Hello, Wilmer Cook.

The rapacious Government-Military-Industrial complex does not rest; they bide their time and prepare for the next opportunity. Industry continues with demonstration projects, NextGen advances as the faith-based solution to all problems, and the political context shifts in favor of contracting out.

The most recent release by the Cato Institute, Privatize the FAA, serves as a reminder that little has changed. We’ve seen their screed before, and to familiar readers Cato’s fallacies scream out for attention — but for the sake of the exercise we’d like to examine Cato’s first two sentences, the rhetorical peg upon which their argument hangs.

Bloomberg is reporting more bad news for the nation’s air traffic control system, which is run by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA is $500 million overbudget and six years behind schedule on a $2.1 billion technology upgrade project.

Cato’s argument draws its justification from the Bloomberg link, and builds credibility by using Bloomberg’s good name. What you’ll find at that link is:

The Federal Aviation Administration may need to spend $500 million more to complete an air-traffic upgrade by Lockheed Martin Co. that is behind schedule and exceeding costs, a Transportation Department inspector said.

Those two statements have subtle but significant differences.

Let’s step back a moment and peek at the man behind the curtain. The Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank / PR shop, founded by Charles Koch (of the Koch Brothers). (more, more, more) A worthy blogger who ‘has the flick’ has covered the Koch’s and the Cato Institute here and here. (update: here)

The Koch Brothers fund the Cato Institute so that Robert Poole can advance positions so extreme that they make industry’s desires seem reasonable. Although Robert Poole’s business has the name of libertarian essayists on the shingle, and while they invoke a family of great thinkers, Poole and the Cato Institute are nothing but pretentious commercial shills, hired mouthpieces who have more in common with the Sophists than with the Cato’s.

Since the Koch Brother’s business aspires to the appearance of ancient wisdom, I wonder what Socrates himself would make of Robert Poole’s modern version of Cato. Socrates relied on the Method of Elenchus, a technique of asking a few questions which would expose the contradictions of improper claims.

Back to the matter at hand. Cato’s position relies on Bloomberg’s report for the building block of their argument which culminates in a call for privatization. Without the claimed Bloomberg justification, the Cato piece is an unwarranted assertion of desire. I could imagine Socrates sitting in the circle of philosophers with his iPad. Socrates (S) would consider Cato’s claims, review the Bloomberg link on his tablet, and ask Robert Poole (RP) a few questions.

S: Who is over budget, behind schedule, and not delivering a working system?
RP: Lockheed Martin.

S: Who identified the problem?
RP: A Government employee.

S: What is your proposed solution?
RP: Close the Government. Give it all to Lockheed Martin.

S: Hmmm.

S: Here, let me Google “syllogistic fallacy” for you: http://tinyurl.com/39qx5ko. (S. passes the tablet to RP.)

There is a series in the Washington Post this week called “Top Secret America“. It’s good journalism, and it’ll probably win awards. It tells the story of the increased and undeclared growth of the security industry since 9/11, and the increased use of contractors and corporations to perform inherently governmental functions. The article does not focus on growth in actual security, but rather on growth in the industry.

The second installment in the series, National Security Inc, carries lessons about government and contractors that extend beyond the realm of homeland security. The following blue excerpts come from the 17-page report.

To ensure that the country’s most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation’s interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called “inherently government functions.” But they do, all the time and in every agency.

Such coziness worries other officials who believe the post-9/11 government-contractor relationship has become, as one senior military intelligence officer described it, a “self-licking ice cream cone.”

From the Double-Tongued Dictionary: self-licking ice cream cone
noun. a process, department, institution, or other thing that offers few benefits and exists primarily to justify or perpetuate its own existence. Also in the form self-licking lollipop.

The story presented in the Washington Post is believable, and it applies to agencies outside of the defense and intelligence fields.

The corporations that are vying to run the nation’s air traffic control systems – Lockheed Martin, Boeing ATC, Raytheon, etc – are not interested in providing effective service to the flying public. They’re interested in profitable government contracts, and in increasing industry’s market share of governmental functions. In the end, they’re only accountable to corporate profitability.

The FAA has decided not to move some air traffic controllers currently at the TRACON facility in Boise to Salt Lake City, ending a long-simmering dispute between the agency, NATCA and local officials.

In a news release, Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) said that during personal telephone calls Tuesday to Idaho Delegation Members and the Mayor of Boise, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the department is dropping plans to co-locate the Boise TRACON with Salt Lake City.

The FAA had wanted to move the Boise system because of alleged cost savings, but the Delegation and Mayor had challenged the budget figures and argued that safety and jobs would be best preserved by keeping the existing system in place with the move to a new airport control tower. Secretary Ray LaHood agreed.

“I appreciate speaking with Secretary LaHood today and applaud his decision to maintain a Terminal Approach Radar in Boise,” said Senator Crapo. “This is the best solution in terms of cost and safety for Southwest Idaho air traffic control. Additionally, it will preserve good-paying jobs at the Boise Airport as we build toward future growth and development.”