Search Results

This chapter focuses on the topic of auctions for the allotment of airport time slots and provides suggestions for mechanisms to use and expand the existing limited capacity safely and efficiently. It begins with a description of the history of the U.S. aviation system, describing and detailing the role of the Civil Aviation Board, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the Federal Aviation Administration, and procedures for allocating landing time slots, along with an explanation of how market-clearing mechanisms are likely to solve problems faced by the current system. The chapter further discusses design principles and research questions for the day of operations slot exchange, as well as the medium-term exchange of slots, and examines several issues that require consideration while evaluating a market-based day of operations exchange. It suggests that issues such as continuous degradation of safety levels and excessive delays can be addressed by putting an effective slot allocation mechanism in place.

This chapter focuses on the birth of unionism among the ranks of air traffic controllers in the United States. It first examines President John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10988, which gave workers too many rights and unions too much power, and how it led air traffic controllers to organize. It then considers EO 10988's inadequacies and the Federal Aviation Administration's resistance to controller organization before turning to the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE), especially how its Local R2–8 won exclusive recognition at the New York Center, displacing the Air Traffic Control Association. Finally, the chapter describes the efforts of New York area controllers, led by Mike Rock and Jack Maher, to form a regionwide controllers' organization.

This chapter recounts the 1960 midair collision between United Airlines Flight 826 and Trans World Airlines Flight 266 over New York airspace that exposed the weaknesses of the United States's overburdened air traffic control system. After providing a background on the collision, the chapter looks at the profiles of some air traffic controllers working for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), particularly Mike Rock and John Francis “Jack” Maher. It then considers the expansion and federalization of air traffic control and the important role of the controller in air transportation after World War II and the FAA's response to the collision before concluding with a a discussion of several developments in private sector labor relations and their impact on the unionization of government workers.

This chapter examines safety issues, centered on inefficient air traffic control systems, and antiquated regulations that continue to plague the U.S. airline industry. It first provides a historical background on commercial jet service in the United States that dramatically altered the aviation industry. It then considers the establishment of three federal agencies with aviation regulatory oversight: the Federal Aviation Administration, whose duty is to promote and regulate aviation while monitoring airline safety; the National Transportation Safety Board, in charge of investigating airline accidents; and the Civil Aeronautics Board, which supervises all aspects of airline operations from flight scheduling to fiscal management. It also explains how the U.S. government got so deeply intertwined in the day-to-day business of airline operations in the post–World War II period. It suggests that the cutthroat competition between airlines in the early days of industry development was largely instigated by the character and personalities of airline executives of the time.

This chapter focuses on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization's (PATCO) inability to forge a greater sense of solidarity among members of differing backgrounds, and how it exacerbated the problems the union faced in the aftermath of the reclass fight. In the early 1960s, when the seeds for PATCO were planted, air traffic control was almost entirely exclusive to white men. Between 1968 and 1978, the air traffic control workforce changed in profound ways. The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) facilities and the expectations of the people who worked in them were altered by the civil rights movement, feminism, and fallout from the Vietnam War. African Americans, women, and a generation of Vietnam veterans entered FAA facilities, diversity began to supersede homogeneity. This chapter examines how PATCO struggled and often failed to adequately come to terms with the new racial, gender, and generational dynamics unleashed by these changes. It also considers the structural changes that contributed to growing discontent among air traffic controllers during the 1970s.

This chapter focuses on the birth of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in 1968, a result mainly of the efforts of New York area air traffic controllers led by Mike Rock and Jack Maher. It considers the role played by trial lawyer F. Lee Bailey in PATCO's early life, as well as its leaders' barnstorming cross-country campaign to promote the new organization. It also discusses PATCO's constitutional convention in Chicago on June 30, 1968 to address its formal constitution, leadership structure, and status as an organization. Finally, it explains how PATCO changed the relationship between air traffic controllers and the Federal Aviation Administration.

This chapter focuses on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization's (PATCO) nationwide strike that unfolded in August 1981 in every state and territory and stretched across the Atlantic. It examines the impact of the strike on air travel, the economy, and the labor movement. It also considers the strike's effect on the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) contingency plan, which included hiring and training hundreds of new air traffic controllers in short order, as well as the role played by airlines, airline pilots, and foreign air traffic controllers in the strike. Finally, the chapter discusses the PATCO strikers' back-channel negotiations and the end of the strike.

This chapter examines the collision between Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 and a Cessna plane on September 25, 1978 over San Diego, and how it led to a further deterioration in the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization's (PATCO) already strained relationship with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under Jimmy Carter's administration. It also considers how the San Diego tragedy destabilized PATCO's leadership and sent the union stumbling in a new—and ultimately fatal—direction. The chapter first looks at the international familiarization flight debacle that left PATCO reeling in the late summer of 1978 before turning to the rise of the “Fifth Column” movement in the western states. Finally, it discusses Congress's failure to enact legislation that might have improved the bargaining power of PATCO and other federal sector unions.

This chapter examines the implications of President Ronald Reagan's policies for the labor movement in general and for the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) in particular. More precisely, it considers the Reagan administration's policies that most trade union leaders believed were not sympathetic to organized labor. It also discusses Reagan's labor strategy in which an envisioned alliance with PATCO and a few other select unions was intended to play a symbolically important role; Reagan's appointment of several key officials such as Andrew L. Lewis as secretary of transportation and J. Lynn Helms as head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA); and PATCO's contract negotiations with the government. Finally, it looks at PATCO's rejection of the tentative contract offered by Reagan's officials that would eventually lead to a strike in August 1981.

This chapter examines how the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization's (PATCO) nationwide strike of August 1981 became a defining moment for Ronald Reagan's presidency, citing the way he handled the crisis and his “willingness to take the political consequences” of governing from “a set of unshakable basic beliefs.” It also considers the PATCO leaders' admission of their mistakes and their efforts through the spring of 1982 to win support for the strikers' rehiring, along with the union's decertification and its eventual dissolution. Finally, it discusses the effects of the PATCO strike on the Federal Aviation Administration, the air traffic control system, public sector trade unions, and the American labor movement.

This chapter focuses on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization's (PATCO) development into a full-blown union. It first considers two developments that contributed to PATCO's unionism: the power struggle that emerged from executive director Herman Meyer's effort to take control of the organization in the winter of 1968–1969, and the deterioration in relations between PATCO and the government in 1969, especially the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). It then looks at PATCO's lobbying of friendly legislators to intervene on the organization's behalf concerning its rift with the FAA before turning to the organization's nineteen-day sickout strike in 1970.

This chapter focuses on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization's (PATCO) conversion to unionism after its failed national sickout in 1970. It considers PATCO's decision to make itself a full-fledged union in order to resolve the ambivalence about its identity as a labor organization and to ensure its survival, as well as the measures taken by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) managers to restore respect for their authority after the PATCO sickout, with particular reference to the dismissal of sickout leaders and the suspension of passive participants. It also looks at PATCO's national convention and the selection of John Leyden as its new president, along with its goals of affiliating with the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association and getting rid of F. Lee Bailey. Finally, the chapter examines how Leyden turned PATCO around, how PATCO won certification from the Department of Labor, and how it forced the FAA to rehire the activists who had been fired for their role in the 1970 sickout.

This chapter deals with why and how TRW, Inc., the Cleveland, Ohio-based automotive supplier and aerospace contractor, first branched into civil systems, expanded its efforts, and then shut them down. In the late 1990s, TRW ventured into “civil systems,” referring to a fast-growing business based on applying management expertise, software systems, and technological capabilities originally developed in the company’s work on defense programs in wholly different areas. The company manages similar big, complex programs for the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Energy, and other civilian government customers. As a result of such efforts, between 1986 and 1996 TRW’s aerospace businesses dramatically lessened their dependence on the U.S. Department of Defense from approximately 95 percent to about 65 percent of sales. The chapter also considers the lessons and conclusions TRW drew from the experience and the legacies that lingered on into the late 1990s.

This chapter focuses on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization's (PATCO) emergence in the 1970s as the most militant, most densely organized union in the United States. It considers how PATCO transformed the hierarchical, military-like workplace culture of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that was deeply inhospitable to unionism and collective bargaining, how it developed an impressive infrastructure and produced a talented group of local and national leaders, and how it won major new protections for air traffic controllers. It also highlights PATCO's weaknesses at a time when all public sector trade unions felt the crunch of “stagflation,” along with the constraints faced by PATCO as a federal workers' union and the FAA's resistance to its demands. Finally, the chapter examines deep tensions within PATCO that threatened its unity and its very existence.