Aviation Staffing Crisis Increasing Near-Collisions at Austin Airport

Air travel remains one of the safest modes of transportation, and crashes are extremely unlikely – there hasn’t been a fatal crash in the U.S. for a major airline in 14 years, and according to the National Transportation Safety Board, in 2020 the fatal accident rate was 1.049 per 100,000 flight hours.

However, in the last few years, labor shortages at airports across the U.S. have been increasing that risk, and Austin is no exception.

On a foggy morning in February, a FedEx plane came within 50 feet of crashing into a Southwest passenger plane on a runway at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, due to a miscommunication on the part of a controller working an overtime shift. In the NTSB’s preliminary report released in March, it found the FedEx flight had been cleared for landing while it was still several miles away, and in the interim a Southwest flight was cleared to depart from the same runway. NTSB is investigating the incident, along with seven other near misses this year.

In an August analysis of close calls, the New York Times found that those seven don’t include several other near misses in Austin: one last November, one this April, and one just last month involving a fighter jet and private plane, The Washington Post reported yesterday. Near-collisions have been increasing over the last year nationally, due largely to human error, according to Federal Aviation Administration records. A NASA report noted 300 close calls in the U.S. this year.

Austin only has 35 fully certified controllers, about 40% fewer than the target level set by the FAA and the controllers’ union. One controller told the Times that he quit because of constant fatigue that was jeopardizing safety, and that he told the manager it was “only a matter of time until we’re so overworked that something is going to happen.” That same manager, also a controllers’ union representative, wrote a memo in June to the FAA saying “drastic steps are needed to allow the facility to adequately staff for existing traffic.”

Since the near miss in February, the FAA has required additional training in Austin but it is unclear if “drastic” steps are being taken to address the staffing crisis. As for overtime, an FAA spokesperson told the Times that controllers’ schedules and workloads are negotiated by their union and that nationwide controllers are spending less time during their shifts directing traffic than they were 15 years ago, supplanted by training and breaks. In August, the FAA noted that they’ve met their 2023 hiring goal for controllers nationally, and have requested budget funding to hire even more next year. However, training can take up to two years to complete, and in 2020, the FAA had to close training facilities for almost two years due to the pandemic, so they’re working from a deficit. And they expect to lose 1,400 controllers next year.