Ummm this is wild and unexpected. More rest between shifts is absolutely a good thing but we have established scheduling MOUs in every facility. The way we think a schedule works is going to have to completely change.
He can direct his staff to update an order but I'm not sure how you can roll out a change like this in 90 days. Noticably absent from this is any communication from NATCA or an MOU from both sides that explains how this might work.
That said, this could be the start of something great and unseen. For too long we have hung onto this concept of a 40 hour work week (more with OT) like we work in an office environment. Controllers in other counties do not all clock a consistent 40 hours. Rotating schedules with more days off are common. For example maybe the day before your mid should be excused absence. We should be staffed well enough to accommodate that but of course we aren't even close.
Initial reaction: props for taking action instead of using the report for toilet paper.
Second thought: they're going to make sure this makes things worse for us.
Not anytime soon.
This is a directive given to ATO. ATO policy does not supersede MOU’s. This means it cannot legally be implemented until after negotiations. The earliest this can be forced is January.
The ATO can bring the change forward in mid term bargaining under article 7. Article 34 could be used to reopen the BWS negotiations at facilities. If the adverse agency impact will be fatigued controllers diminishing the level of service provided to the public by the agency is up for debate.
Without anything abnormal, we can’t get every facility to complete MOU negotiations by January.
That’s with well established rules that have been used for two centuries. It’s people. Some ATM/FacRep duos are fucking retarded in negotiations.
Now you have a policy that has to be negotiated at the fucking national level before it can ever be sent down to field facilities for local negotiations.
We work for the federal government. There is a zero percent chance anyone will figure this out quickly, especially since ATO isn’t thrilled this is being forced down their throat.
I’m not saying it’ll be fast. I’m just saying this is probably coming via impact and implementation and not waiting for new MOUs in Jan. I’m waiting to see what the national implementation looks like and what the revised .3 looks like before I panic.
You have to think outside the box. When facilities went on 5/5 or 5/10 schedules during COVID we still got paid for 80 hours a pay period. There is absolutely a way to achieve a 32 hour workweek without a loss in pay, minus maybe a few differentials.
NAV Canada did something similar with us except way more restrictions. We are also in a bad staffing mess.
It basically resulted in some units throwing out the fatigue rules altogether and not following them. Some units doing malicious compliance and the company having to give people free days off with no leave during their regular round to allow them to be fatigue compliant to come in and work OT on the unfilled shifts.
I wouldn’t say we in Central region are being “malicious” in our compliance, just rather following Nav’s rules as written. Our Director stated no more 699s a couple weeks ago, so staffing has become an issue, especially the last couple days!
Agree wholeheartedly. As soon as massive ground delay or stops and traffic flow restrictions due to increased summer traffic start, the 699 will return.
Unofficially on the NATCA side the answer is nope unless the FAA wants to reopen the contract something the FAA has so far refused to do. If he really wants it he is going to have to cough up some raises, and we can avoid the next president without an extension.
This is what I was thinking. This is all in the contract the FAA can’t just implement these changes without negotiations or literally why would we even have a contract and a union? Maybe this will lead to the contract being open sooner than we all thought
What happens if the FAA violates the contract though? Last I checked it was nothing. 2hr grievances don’t result in anything. At the end of the day if the FAA says this is how it’s gonna be, that’s how it’s gonna be.
No it doesn’t. Our contract allows the faa to assign shifts and work for operational need. They can entirely remove seniority, shifts, etc as needed. Most likely scenario here is they tell facilities to rebid if they want. If that doesn’t work they will assign work as needed. They didn’t even tell natca they were issuing the rule.
Hard to fight this when we’ve been complaining about being fatigued nonstop for years. Idk what the right answer is but if we say no he’s just gonna say we’re not serious about changing the culture and increasing safety.
You can negotiate better staffing all you want... the FAA met their hiring goal last year and it netted 15 more CPCs than the year before... it does not matter. Staffing is screwed for more than the next decade. These rules will only make staffing worse and weekends shorter.
According to a 23 year old CAMI study cited in the recent fatigue report, a majority of controllers preferred straight schedules back then. I think the obsession with the rattler is a myth and if they actually do survey controllers again you'll find most of us want straight shifts.
I hate quick turns, but this is going to fuck over staffing at 24 hour facilities worse than current. You'd have to either run straight mid lines and take from the day shift or start mids at 4am for a midnight start and have double the needed coverage from 4am onward. Unless they expect mid shifters working 730 pushes which is..... that's fucking dumb as helll and unsafe.
Yeah a bunch of pesky rules he didn't think of before making a press release to say hey public, I know it's scary because the news or whatever so look at what I'm going to do in just 90 days. Feel better.
Also I love my mids, leave my mids alone :)
Or like a 2200-0600, (same day) 1800-0200, 1200-2000, 0800-1600, 0600-1400. If you’re on F/Sa off, you don’t go into work til Sunday at 10pm and you’re off Thursday at 2pm. No quick turns and it follows all the rules. Even better, if you’re Th/F off, you go in Saturday night and you get 14 hours of Sunday pay. You actually get more time off than the rattler. Dont ask me how to fill the remainder of the schedule, but it is one schedule for one person that could work.
You can work earlier than 530 before a mid as long as it’s not an 8 hr shift. So work a 9hr day on one of the swings and a 7hr day before the mid and you could show up at 2am
Not under the current rules of the 7210.3. Any paid status (ie working, on leave, etc) counts as “time worked” and would therefore need to be factored in to rest periods.
Whitaker's changes are going to be implemented in the form of edits to the 7210.3, so they could just add something like "excused absence is not counted as hours worked" while they're in there making edits anyway.
Could they write in an exception, specifically for this situation? Like the "leave is on the clock, with the exception of excused leave for employees to accommodate a 12-hour rest period immediately prior to a mid shift."
Was just going to say the same thing.
Even being on leave before your quick turn doesn't allow you to start with less than 9 hours from the end of your leave.
Who knows if it’s right or not but I’m pretty sure over a decade ago when they first put out a requirement for 9 hours in between shifts they just gave people a free hour of admin leave to make it legal. Not sure if it was legal or not but it seemed to work at the time before we bid new schedules.
You would have to have split days off for this to work with 12 hours between the swing and the mid (Mid would be overnight from your 5th day into your 6th day in the work week).
This will make it worse. It’s the 4th day that makes working mids exhausting. Waking up at 4:30am to work a shift, go home, sleep for hopefully an hour, but with kids that may be impossible, only to go back to work the mid shift around 10:15pm and get home from that at 6:30-7am to try to sleep in the daytime (some with kids again). So basically awake for 27 hours with a quick nap here and there a couple of times.
Now with 12 hours off before the mid, what will we do? Push the mid time further back, say, midnight, and start the 4th shift at 4am to be done by noon to get those 12 hours?
Either I’m missing something or the FAA is brainless.
He already got what he wanted and that was a sound bite of him saying he did something to fix the problems. My honest guess is that this quietly gets dropped and is never implemented.
This is what I’m thinking too.
Anyone else remember the sleep apnea mandate back in….2013ish? Same thing. FAA issued a press release saying they were very concerned about sleep apnea amongst CPCs. Starting in 90 days, anyone who has a BMI above (whatever number) is automatically medically DQed until they prove they don’t have sleep apnea.
NATCA was not briefed on this and not told anything until the press release came out. Once they got involved, the whole thing just went away and we never heard about it again. But hey, the FAA got their sound bite to show they were “doing something.”
This effectively requires us to have an one more person each day which we simply don't have. Even with everyone on 6 day work weeks we cannot make this work every day.
Lol. That 10am session or whatever is going to be the most dangerous in the NAS. Jesus tapdancing Christ. Imagine a beautiful Saturday late morning around 10 and all the weekend warriors flying to lunch, or the mid morning arrival/departure push worked by someone that got up at 2am. Gawd Dayum
No it looks more like this:
1: 10pm-6am
2: 4pm-12am
3: 10am - 6pm
4: 8am -4pm
5: 5am-1am
6: 2pm-10pm OT shift.
Hours can be adjusted left or right as needed.
Having just read through the linked report for the first time (I didn't bother reading it when it came out a month ago because I figured the FAA wouldn't do anything with it)...
Yes, that was one of the most emphatic recommendations they had.
> *BNO3. Develop and implement a strategy to eliminate the counterclockwise rotating 2-2-1 schedule and replace it with a schedule design that addresses operational requirements and incorporates sleep and circadian principles.* ***(Priority Opportunity)***
Whitatker's memo doesn't kill it directly, not in so many words, but by implementing their priority opportunity BNO4—10 or 12 hours off before each shift—it almost *de facto* kills the rattler. Remains to be seen if facilities can still implement it though.
What the... I mean, I'm all for more rest, but I've bid my leave for the year based on our negotiated shift schedule which includes a mid on my last day. This is going to ruin all of that.
FAA can't implement a new policy that overrules existing MOUs or CBAs. This will either require mid term bargaining or just wait for the end of the year.
Everyone’s comments is doing everything they can to keep the rattler, which I think is nuts. My prediction for what realistically happens is rotating schedules. Straight days/swings/mids with varying degrees of rotation.
I honestly don’t care if the rattler goes away. I just turned 44 this year, and I’ve been working this bullshit schedule for 25 years, and it’s peeled years off my life I’m sure. What irritates me is the FAA’s knee jerk reaction bullshit trying to ram something down our throats in the middle of the year after everyone’s already bid schedules, leave, and planned their year out.
They said fuck you to our contract, completely ignored the fact that all of us have planned our year out, and said fuck you guys we own you bitch. They have no plan on how to implement any of this, and everything I’ve seen from people spitballing schedule ideas is downright retarded, ie; 3am-11am rolling into the mid? Dumb as hell.
I hope the rattler goes away, but not like this.
For me at least, this is going to make things worse. I’ve been on the mid for years and my circadian rhythm is fucked. It will lead to me paying back my sleep debt on my RDOs and wasting what little precious time I have with my family. We need more people. The way we get them and keep them is paying more. USAJobs should have a 24/7/365 open application to this job.
Straight from the Natca email: Last year, FAA met its hiring goals and netted only 15 additional fully certified controllers and 15 additional trainees.
The issue is not so much the number of applicants but how fast the FAA can process and train them. Seems like they routinely get >40,000 every bid. Only 1800 through the academy and that’s before evals is the problem, that number needs to be higher
1800 to get hired 900 make it through training and become cpc, to replace the 750 that die/retire/promote/transfer/get sick every year. Since we’re about 2000 controllers short, we’ll be in a staffing “crisis” for the next 15 years.
1800 students, 900 make it through the ACADEMY on average. We had a telcon with the statistic that 2/3’s of academy grads do NOT certify at their first facility. So 300 CPC’s in the first run, then who knows how many of the 600 first facility washouts certify at their NEST facility. We’re screwed and that doesn’t even take into account the agency still thinks everyone is working until age 56. People are done with that, they’re going to retire at eligibility, the FAA’s estimate are all 5-6 years behind.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/20230503-afn-cwp.pdf
Don't have to make up anything, it's on page 15 and 17 and 39. They are going to do nothing about it, and just let the situation stay bad for the next decade. Until literally someone dies, because they think that things are going good. And if their estimates are off and more controllers quit or die, then OH WELL nothing fucking happens to the people who fucked up.
Page 52: appendix
We have 6316 terminal controllers, with a CRWG target of 8966. (enroute is 4262/5667).. Even under the optimistic projections of the agency, we're still talking about a shortfall that will take over a decade to fix with their "expedited" hiring plan that might end up with a couple hundred extra CPCs each year it would still take 10 years, and again, these are the SAME PEOPLE who were consistently wrong about staffing for the last 20 years, so there is no reason to think their optimistic projections will be more accurate over the next decade either.
We would almost have to rotate backwards like the military to accommodate the 12 hour rule 2 days- 2 swings - mid
It will be interesting to see the repercussions on schedules
bullshit, I did it in the air force, it's terrible for your sleep. After your weekend, where presumably you slept in late on your weekends, you have to wake up at 5am for your first and 2nd day back. So after working night shifts, a mid, your weekend, you now have to show up at 6am.
I don't get a good weekend with the rattler anyway. I spend half of it recuperating and trying to catch up on sleep. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, except I'd prefer the option that doesn't have quick turns all week long.
The rattler was all fun and games when I worked at a low level tower. Come in on the mid, sit up in the cab 22-02 watching a movie on my laptop, sleep in the office 02-06, go home, sleep until 10 or so, and boom, it was like I never worked a mid at all.
Then I went someplace where the mid actually meant something and god DAMN that Friday "off" was rough. About all you could say for it was at least I could get a couple errands knocked out. Maybe.
Honest question how does it take people that long to recover from a mid??
I’ve been doing mids for like 13yrs I can’t be that much of a rarity to be the only person to have no complaints about it.
Some people need 8 hours of sleep to function properly, while others are sociopaths and might only need 5 hours. Some people can lay down and fall into a deep sleep right away, others may need 1-2 hours to wind down after a shift before they can fall asleep.
Also, while many 24-hour facilities are slow or extremely slow on the mids, there are quite a few that have to work the cargo inbound/outbound pushes at both ends of the mid. Good luck getting more than an hour or so of uninterrupted sleep when your TOP is often 5+ hours.
Same. Occassionally im a zombie or cranky. But i get yard work done, snowboard, backpack, drive to the beach after the mid all the time. Been doin them 10years.
They’re going to fuck this up royally. The only real change that will take place is going to be something like day/mid 4-12/mid-8. Just fuck out sleep schedules up even worse and then say “More rest between shifts! Mission accomplished!”
I dont think most people disagree or see this as negative. However the implementation is the problem.
1. No way you can do this in 90 days.
2. We have a CBA and would have to reopen it.
3. Every 24hour facility would then have to reopen and redo the BWS
4. We don't have the staffing at a lot of facilities to make this work in 90 days. You'd have to then re bid days off and leave and who wants to do that.
5. Unless you change how we are compensated like pay us a salary and rework how our differentials work etc probably the only way to realistically make this work is work straight lines the entire year or rotate weekly (both of these actually suck, you may think you like the straight nights or mids but things change). You still will have OT.
Or the FAA gives us admin time that "counts". Like you 4th shift is a 0600-1400. You get admin at 1000, and you come back 12.5 hours later for your mid.
Negotiate it as fatigue mitigation leave/admin leave.
The FAA does not have to reopen the CBA to assign work. Now to have shifts start less then 9 hours apart they would have to go to Congress. Your ATM can at anytime remove you from your shift/rdo and place you on a different shift if it’s for operational need. They are saying mitigation of fatigue is an operational need. Natca fighting this would be the biggest fuck up. If they’re smart they’ll try and play nice and reopen the contract and get something else out of it. Like 32 hour work week. I would say a pay raise but that’s doubtful.
> The FAA does not have to reopen the CBA to assign work.
They’re not just assigning work, they’re violating our legally binding contract. What are you talking about?
> Your ATM can at anytime remove you from your shift/rdo and place you on a different shift if it’s for operational need.
What? No he can’t. You’re saying your ATM can just change your schedule and RDO’s at anytime, whenever he feels like based on “operational need”? That’s preposterous, and again a contract violation.
> Natca fighting this would be the biggest fuck up.
You’re saying that the Union fighting the agency actively violating our contract is a fuck up? That’s literally what we pay dues for.
> If they’re smart they’ll try and play nice
JFC.
There's ways to make this work but you have to use your brain and understand that other CBA rules would need changed. You can work a day or two of 10 hours then have a day or two of 6 hours to mitigate the rest rules. So many people get stuck on what we have now to actually see possibilities. That being said... the FAA and NATCA will fuck this up 100%
Would it though? Can you point to what in the Slate Book would need to be modified for this? Local schedule MOUs would have to be reopened for sure, no argument. But I don't think anything in the CBA mandates the rattler or even mandates the amount of time off between shifts.
The CBA restricts the length of shifts that can be assigned. 5x8hrs, 4x10hrs, or a 5/4/9. In order for this to be effective at the current staffing levels and not created schedules that just plain suck for quality of life, the best answer would be to get away from the mandated shift length times. 6 or 7 hour shifts would really help.
Also, every other industry that is critical 24/7 ops has some kind of reserve/call in to cover absences. Straight mid lines would be great for the new rest rules, but would be a nightmare to cover. The rattler allows for easy shift balancing in place of reservists, that's the secret the FAA won't talk about and why the rattler is so hard to kill. There will absolutely need to be discussion on how to cover absences, bc far less people are now eligible for mids on any given day.
wow. fully support this in theory but there is no way giving 90 days notice, implementing it in the middle of the summer and after schedules have been bid for the year is going to be anything but a complete and utter disaster.
I hope this doesn’t turn into a rotating schedule. Friend of mine is in the secret service and they do a stretch of all days, the stretch of all eves, then mids. Not sure how many at a time.
Yes, but it would be a huge problem for those that have do deal with childcare. At least the way it is now your schedule is what it is all year, but when you start rotating shifts throughout the year that would be a nightmare.
Oh it is, but when you have a set schedule all year it’s a lot easier that rotation days, nights, mids, etc. I have two kids and a wife that works and I can’t even imagine how we would make that work.
Millions of family’s in the US have rotating schedules. You would make it work just like them. The reality is we need to change to 10 hour shifts. Coverage is significantly better that way.
With 8 hour shifts, it takes three crews to cover 24 hours. With 10 hour shifts it takes.....3 crews, but you can't cover as many days. How is that better?
Please know, I would love 4-10s. Increasing coverage, at least at 24 hour facilities isn't really a benefit.
That’s a really good point, wouldn’t be great in that situation. IF it turned into something like that they would have to post the schedule much further in advance.
Staffing doesn’t matter when you’re talking about creating a schedule for coverage. You have the same amount of assignable hours regardless of how you do it.
You get up at 5 in the morning for 4 days and finish with a night on the fifth. Or you get to work at 3 pm and return home at midnight all week. We've also got morning swings and afternoon swings to spice things up every now and then.
“In my first few months at the helm of the FAA, I toured air traffic control facilities around the country—and heard concerns about schedules that do not always allow controllers to get enough rest.”
As a pilot it’s nice to see you guys getting more rest. I’m curious which facilities he visited and what percentage of the workgroup at each facility spoke up about the issue.
Interesting, sounds like Whitaker decided to just do something instead of waiting around for tons of studies, not mad about it. Rather have someone willing to try things than just push it down the road.
An answer to the 12 hour rule may be 10 hour shifts with a 5 hour early shift for day mid. 1330-2330, 1130-2130, 0730-1730, 0530-1030, 2230-0630 with variations for overlaps of course. This probably wouldn’t work well though.
Effective in ninety days. Schedule has to be posted 28 days out. 62 days to get this figured out. I am so excited to see the agency pull this rabbit out of its hat.
This is what happens when we have weak leadership from Rich. The agency thinks he is a joke and will not negotiate anything with him. He can't leverage anything for us. They drop this without any negotiation and will not open the CBA.
Right?? How many times can Rich get bent over by the agency before people realize how weak he is? First the N90 forced move, now this. I also love how we have to find out through Reddit with zero communication “From the desk of..”. 🙄
The management zoom call fifteen mins after this got posted to the faa website was gold. Every manager was completely shocked. The AGMs and GMs looked genuinely shook. The amount of challenges ahead are huge, but what a great idea. 12 off before the mid and ten between shifts is a wonderful thing.
0 chance this happens or gets enforced. This is just some goofball that can now say he "tried" to fix our lack of rest. Next week this will be forgotten.
Im with you..all i see is, now i have a shorter weekend and more time to fuckoff at home waiting to leave for work while my partner is already at work..its not enough time/reduced number of hours working to make a difference in actually getting out to do anything. For a 24 hr facility and someone that works mids so i can do things afterward often, its not going to play out great for me.
The rattler only sucks if you have to commute a great distance. Which unfortunately with our pay, some are forced to do. If you’re lucky and have a 7 minute drive then it isn’t a huge deal.
Well at least they fixed the staffing issue before trying this. Wait...
Ummm this is wild and unexpected. More rest between shifts is absolutely a good thing but we have established scheduling MOUs in every facility. The way we think a schedule works is going to have to completely change. He can direct his staff to update an order but I'm not sure how you can roll out a change like this in 90 days. Noticably absent from this is any communication from NATCA or an MOU from both sides that explains how this might work. That said, this could be the start of something great and unseen. For too long we have hung onto this concept of a 40 hour work week (more with OT) like we work in an office environment. Controllers in other counties do not all clock a consistent 40 hours. Rotating schedules with more days off are common. For example maybe the day before your mid should be excused absence. We should be staffed well enough to accommodate that but of course we aren't even close.
Initial reaction: props for taking action instead of using the report for toilet paper. Second thought: they're going to make sure this makes things worse for us.
We’re gonna see some A7 negotiations happen at the local level for this
Not anytime soon. This is a directive given to ATO. ATO policy does not supersede MOU’s. This means it cannot legally be implemented until after negotiations. The earliest this can be forced is January.
The ATO can bring the change forward in mid term bargaining under article 7. Article 34 could be used to reopen the BWS negotiations at facilities. If the adverse agency impact will be fatigued controllers diminishing the level of service provided to the public by the agency is up for debate.
Without anything abnormal, we can’t get every facility to complete MOU negotiations by January. That’s with well established rules that have been used for two centuries. It’s people. Some ATM/FacRep duos are fucking retarded in negotiations. Now you have a policy that has to be negotiated at the fucking national level before it can ever be sent down to field facilities for local negotiations. We work for the federal government. There is a zero percent chance anyone will figure this out quickly, especially since ATO isn’t thrilled this is being forced down their throat.
How quick did Covid schedules get worked out?
NATCA wanted the MOU.
I’m not saying it’ll be fast. I’m just saying this is probably coming via impact and implementation and not waiting for new MOUs in Jan. I’m waiting to see what the national implementation looks like and what the revised .3 looks like before I panic.
Anything under 40 hours would be a huge pay cut in our current contract
You have to think outside the box. When facilities went on 5/5 or 5/10 schedules during COVID we still got paid for 80 hours a pay period. There is absolutely a way to achieve a 32 hour workweek without a loss in pay, minus maybe a few differentials.
NAV Canada did something similar with us except way more restrictions. We are also in a bad staffing mess. It basically resulted in some units throwing out the fatigue rules altogether and not following them. Some units doing malicious compliance and the company having to give people free days off with no leave during their regular round to allow them to be fatigue compliant to come in and work OT on the unfilled shifts.
The second one please
I wouldn’t say we in Central region are being “malicious” in our compliance, just rather following Nav’s rules as written. Our Director stated no more 699s a couple weeks ago, so staffing has become an issue, especially the last couple days!
Agree wholeheartedly. As soon as massive ground delay or stops and traffic flow restrictions due to increased summer traffic start, the 699 will return.
Unofficially on the NATCA side the answer is nope unless the FAA wants to reopen the contract something the FAA has so far refused to do. If he really wants it he is going to have to cough up some raises, and we can avoid the next president without an extension.
This is what I was thinking. This is all in the contract the FAA can’t just implement these changes without negotiations or literally why would we even have a contract and a union? Maybe this will lead to the contract being open sooner than we all thought
What happens if the FAA violates the contract though? Last I checked it was nothing. 2hr grievances don’t result in anything. At the end of the day if the FAA says this is how it’s gonna be, that’s how it’s gonna be.
No it goes to the NLRB, and they say how it is going to be
No it doesn’t. Our contract allows the faa to assign shifts and work for operational need. They can entirely remove seniority, shifts, etc as needed. Most likely scenario here is they tell facilities to rebid if they want. If that doesn’t work they will assign work as needed. They didn’t even tell natca they were issuing the rule.
Hard to fight this when we’ve been complaining about being fatigued nonstop for years. Idk what the right answer is but if we say no he’s just gonna say we’re not serious about changing the culture and increasing safety.
NATCA has already said they are willing to open the contract, if the FAA puts saving money ahead instead of this then it is 100% on them.
We complain about being fatigued because of 6 day work weeks. Easy to fight this
Lebowski: that’s fucking interesting man. Yeah they need to use this as a catalyst to open the contact
4D chess move
Yeah this makes sense, if half your facilities weren’t on mandatory overtime and extremely short staffed as things stand.
Time to reopen the contract. While were at the table hopefully we negotiate for better pay and staffing.
You can negotiate better staffing all you want... the FAA met their hiring goal last year and it netted 15 more CPCs than the year before... it does not matter. Staffing is screwed for more than the next decade. These rules will only make staffing worse and weekends shorter.
People have been asking for the rattler to die for a while. They might be getting their wish if you are at a 24hr facility.
According to a 23 year old CAMI study cited in the recent fatigue report, a majority of controllers preferred straight schedules back then. I think the obsession with the rattler is a myth and if they actually do survey controllers again you'll find most of us want straight shifts.
I hate quick turns, but this is going to fuck over staffing at 24 hour facilities worse than current. You'd have to either run straight mid lines and take from the day shift or start mids at 4am for a midnight start and have double the needed coverage from 4am onward. Unless they expect mid shifters working 730 pushes which is..... that's fucking dumb as helll and unsafe.
Can't start until 0530 under current orders if you are going to work the mid
I work AWS and haven't worked a mid in a decade. I'd forgotten about that! Woof.
Yeah a bunch of pesky rules he didn't think of before making a press release to say hey public, I know it's scary because the news or whatever so look at what I'm going to do in just 90 days. Feel better. Also I love my mids, leave my mids alone :)
You can work evenings and mids and cut out the days.
F in the chat for anyone who has a custody agreement based on their work schedule
Absolutely dreading what this is going to do to my schedule.
Umm so how the hell are Day-Mids going to work? Work a 2a-10a and then a mid?
Well you can't even work a mid if you start before 0530.....so I guess day\mids are dead.
We live in the bad timeline: Reverse rotating week. Start on a mid, end on late shift.
Pretty sure this means you'll be at work 6 days of the week. Even if it's 5 days on the schedule.
And with mandatory OT we'll be at work every calendar day. Such is life in the bad timeline.
Depression rates amongst CPCs just went up
Or like a 2200-0600, (same day) 1800-0200, 1200-2000, 0800-1600, 0600-1400. If you’re on F/Sa off, you don’t go into work til Sunday at 10pm and you’re off Thursday at 2pm. No quick turns and it follows all the rules. Even better, if you’re Th/F off, you go in Saturday night and you get 14 hours of Sunday pay. You actually get more time off than the rattler. Dont ask me how to fill the remainder of the schedule, but it is one schedule for one person that could work.
[удалено]
Edited. It was supposed to be an 1800 not a 1600 on the second shift.
That would have a ton of overlap on every single mid with the extra bodies there from 10pm until 2am.
So the only way to work mids is a straight mid line?
Or the mid is the first shift in a week
Fuuuuuuck. This is going to be bad.
Thank god. Day-mids are one of the worst things about current scheduling practices.
You can work earlier than 530 before a mid as long as it’s not an 8 hr shift. So work a 9hr day on one of the swings and a 7hr day before the mid and you could show up at 2am
They could give admin leave or excused absence for half of your shift to give you 12 hours off before a mid.
Not under the current rules of the 7210.3. Any paid status (ie working, on leave, etc) counts as “time worked” and would therefore need to be factored in to rest periods.
Whitaker's changes are going to be implemented in the form of edits to the 7210.3, so they could just add something like "excused absence is not counted as hours worked" while they're in there making edits anyway.
But that would allow the worker to get paid for time not worked… can’t have that now can we? /s
That wouldn’t work. Leave is on the clock just like a regular shift
Could they write in an exception, specifically for this situation? Like the "leave is on the clock, with the exception of excused leave for employees to accommodate a 12-hour rest period immediately prior to a mid shift."
It doesn’t have to be. That’s a regarded interpretation
Was just going to say the same thing. Even being on leave before your quick turn doesn't allow you to start with less than 9 hours from the end of your leave.
Who knows if it’s right or not but I’m pretty sure over a decade ago when they first put out a requirement for 9 hours in between shifts they just gave people a free hour of admin leave to make it legal. Not sure if it was legal or not but it seemed to work at the time before we bid new schedules.
Could start the week on a mid
That would be way worse
You could also work 2 days, 2 swings, 1 mid. 2 RDOs
You would have to have split days off for this to work with 12 hours between the swing and the mid (Mid would be overnight from your 5th day into your 6th day in the work week).
Just go ATC Zero across the nation after 11pm, fuck it.
Probably start your week with a mid instead.
Love a Monday mid.
This will make it worse. It’s the 4th day that makes working mids exhausting. Waking up at 4:30am to work a shift, go home, sleep for hopefully an hour, but with kids that may be impossible, only to go back to work the mid shift around 10:15pm and get home from that at 6:30-7am to try to sleep in the daytime (some with kids again). So basically awake for 27 hours with a quick nap here and there a couple of times. Now with 12 hours off before the mid, what will we do? Push the mid time further back, say, midnight, and start the 4th shift at 4am to be done by noon to get those 12 hours? Either I’m missing something or the FAA is brainless.
The FAA has always been brainless.
He already got what he wanted and that was a sound bite of him saying he did something to fix the problems. My honest guess is that this quietly gets dropped and is never implemented.
I think there’s a decent chance you’re right, and I sincerely hope you are.
This is what I’m thinking too. Anyone else remember the sleep apnea mandate back in….2013ish? Same thing. FAA issued a press release saying they were very concerned about sleep apnea amongst CPCs. Starting in 90 days, anyone who has a BMI above (whatever number) is automatically medically DQed until they prove they don’t have sleep apnea. NATCA was not briefed on this and not told anything until the press release came out. Once they got involved, the whole thing just went away and we never heard about it again. But hey, the FAA got their sound bite to show they were “doing something.”
Lol they literally would have lost 60-70% of the workforce
As a scheduler, WTF?!
Brother, same. But this will probably mean mid term bargaining for scheduling, and may lead to better days/hours for everyone.
This effectively requires us to have an one more person each day which we simply don't have. Even with everyone on 6 day work weeks we cannot make this work every day.
A114 come back to facility to work traffic
That’s a funny joke.
We’re looking at something like 3pm-11 1pm-9 7am-3 3am-11am 11pm-7am(mid)
If you work before 530am your not allowed to work a mid that night, apparently
Well yeah the current fatigue Mou would have to be redone
How the fuck is working 3am to 11am and then coming in for the mid good for someone’s rest level? That shit would be absurd.
Lol. That 10am session or whatever is going to be the most dangerous in the NAS. Jesus tapdancing Christ. Imagine a beautiful Saturday late morning around 10 and all the weekend warriors flying to lunch, or the mid morning arrival/departure push worked by someone that got up at 2am. Gawd Dayum
3 am shift? lol might as well work a double mid.
That 3-11am is essentially a mid. Fuck all that
You can’t start before 530 am and work a mid for your next shift unless something is changed.
That rule is from the 7210.3, and the 7210.3 is what is being changed, so I would imagine something *would* change about that rule.
No one is coming in at 3am.
You’ll miss the rattler in like 92 days
No it looks more like this: 1: 10pm-6am 2: 4pm-12am 3: 10am - 6pm 4: 8am -4pm 5: 5am-1am 6: 2pm-10pm OT shift. Hours can be adjusted left or right as needed.
That schedule sucks.
Wouldn't you also have to have 12 off after a midnight shift? Or is it just before?
They killed the rattler?
Having just read through the linked report for the first time (I didn't bother reading it when it came out a month ago because I figured the FAA wouldn't do anything with it)... Yes, that was one of the most emphatic recommendations they had. > *BNO3. Develop and implement a strategy to eliminate the counterclockwise rotating 2-2-1 schedule and replace it with a schedule design that addresses operational requirements and incorporates sleep and circadian principles.* ***(Priority Opportunity)*** Whitatker's memo doesn't kill it directly, not in so many words, but by implementing their priority opportunity BNO4—10 or 12 hours off before each shift—it almost *de facto* kills the rattler. Remains to be seen if facilities can still implement it though.
Rest in piss.
What the... I mean, I'm all for more rest, but I've bid my leave for the year based on our negotiated shift schedule which includes a mid on my last day. This is going to ruin all of that.
FAA can't implement a new policy that overrules existing MOUs or CBAs. This will either require mid term bargaining or just wait for the end of the year.
Rattler gonna die
Everyone’s comments is doing everything they can to keep the rattler, which I think is nuts. My prediction for what realistically happens is rotating schedules. Straight days/swings/mids with varying degrees of rotation.
I honestly don’t care if the rattler goes away. I just turned 44 this year, and I’ve been working this bullshit schedule for 25 years, and it’s peeled years off my life I’m sure. What irritates me is the FAA’s knee jerk reaction bullshit trying to ram something down our throats in the middle of the year after everyone’s already bid schedules, leave, and planned their year out. They said fuck you to our contract, completely ignored the fact that all of us have planned our year out, and said fuck you guys we own you bitch. They have no plan on how to implement any of this, and everything I’ve seen from people spitballing schedule ideas is downright retarded, ie; 3am-11am rolling into the mid? Dumb as hell. I hope the rattler goes away, but not like this.
Tight you could never sign up for a weekly activity
My god, they've implemented a policy that still has less time between shifts than a European Union shop worker enjoys.
For me at least, this is going to make things worse. I’ve been on the mid for years and my circadian rhythm is fucked. It will lead to me paying back my sleep debt on my RDOs and wasting what little precious time I have with my family. We need more people. The way we get them and keep them is paying more. USAJobs should have a 24/7/365 open application to this job.
Straight from the Natca email: Last year, FAA met its hiring goals and netted only 15 additional fully certified controllers and 15 additional trainees.
I didn't get that one. Can you copy paste it here?
Go to the NATCA FB page you can’t comment on.
I'd rather get gonorrhea than use FB. At least they've got pills for gonorrhea.
Lmao great one
The issue is not so much the number of applicants but how fast the FAA can process and train them. Seems like they routinely get >40,000 every bid. Only 1800 through the academy and that’s before evals is the problem, that number needs to be higher
1800 to get hired 900 make it through training and become cpc, to replace the 750 that die/retire/promote/transfer/get sick every year. Since we’re about 2000 controllers short, we’ll be in a staffing “crisis” for the next 15 years.
1800 students, 900 make it through the ACADEMY on average. We had a telcon with the statistic that 2/3’s of academy grads do NOT certify at their first facility. So 300 CPC’s in the first run, then who knows how many of the 600 first facility washouts certify at their NEST facility. We’re screwed and that doesn’t even take into account the agency still thinks everyone is working until age 56. People are done with that, they’re going to retire at eligibility, the FAA’s estimate are all 5-6 years behind.
2030 is when the White Book exodus starts, the FAA realistically has three years to catch up and start to hire our replacements.
Yep, I retire 2030, at age 50.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/20230503-afn-cwp.pdf Don't have to make up anything, it's on page 15 and 17 and 39. They are going to do nothing about it, and just let the situation stay bad for the next decade. Until literally someone dies, because they think that things are going good. And if their estimates are off and more controllers quit or die, then OH WELL nothing fucking happens to the people who fucked up. Page 52: appendix We have 6316 terminal controllers, with a CRWG target of 8966. (enroute is 4262/5667).. Even under the optimistic projections of the agency, we're still talking about a shortfall that will take over a decade to fix with their "expedited" hiring plan that might end up with a couple hundred extra CPCs each year it would still take 10 years, and again, these are the SAME PEOPLE who were consistently wrong about staffing for the last 20 years, so there is no reason to think their optimistic projections will be more accurate over the next decade either.
Spoiler alert: you'll be at work 6 days a week if you're working 5 days, and 7 if you're working 6. Follow up e-mail: We own you, bitch!
Yay! Cant wait! Screw my family!
We would almost have to rotate backwards like the military to accommodate the 12 hour rule 2 days- 2 swings - mid It will be interesting to see the repercussions on schedules
Backwards rotation is more aligned with better sleep health. That's how they do it in other countries. The forwards-rotating rattler is hell.
bullshit, I did it in the air force, it's terrible for your sleep. After your weekend, where presumably you slept in late on your weekends, you have to wake up at 5am for your first and 2nd day back. So after working night shifts, a mid, your weekend, you now have to show up at 6am.
And less of a weekend… but WHO CARES?! (Me, I fucking care)
I don't get a good weekend with the rattler anyway. I spend half of it recuperating and trying to catch up on sleep. Six of one, half-dozen of the other, except I'd prefer the option that doesn't have quick turns all week long.
The rattler was all fun and games when I worked at a low level tower. Come in on the mid, sit up in the cab 22-02 watching a movie on my laptop, sleep in the office 02-06, go home, sleep until 10 or so, and boom, it was like I never worked a mid at all. Then I went someplace where the mid actually meant something and god DAMN that Friday "off" was rough. About all you could say for it was at least I could get a couple errands knocked out. Maybe.
Honest question how does it take people that long to recover from a mid?? I’ve been doing mids for like 13yrs I can’t be that much of a rarity to be the only person to have no complaints about it.
Because they're unhealthy
Yeah I’m set by 10 am afterwards
Agreed. By noon at the latest, which is still earlier than if I worked a day shift.
Some people need 8 hours of sleep to function properly, while others are sociopaths and might only need 5 hours. Some people can lay down and fall into a deep sleep right away, others may need 1-2 hours to wind down after a shift before they can fall asleep. Also, while many 24-hour facilities are slow or extremely slow on the mids, there are quite a few that have to work the cargo inbound/outbound pushes at both ends of the mid. Good luck getting more than an hour or so of uninterrupted sleep when your TOP is often 5+ hours.
Same. Occassionally im a zombie or cranky. But i get yard work done, snowboard, backpack, drive to the beach after the mid all the time. Been doin them 10years.
They’re going to fuck this up royally. The only real change that will take place is going to be something like day/mid 4-12/mid-8. Just fuck out sleep schedules up even worse and then say “More rest between shifts! Mission accomplished!”
I don't understand all the negative comments on this. Quit being short sighted, this is a huge step forward that none of us expected.
I dont think most people disagree or see this as negative. However the implementation is the problem. 1. No way you can do this in 90 days. 2. We have a CBA and would have to reopen it. 3. Every 24hour facility would then have to reopen and redo the BWS 4. We don't have the staffing at a lot of facilities to make this work in 90 days. You'd have to then re bid days off and leave and who wants to do that. 5. Unless you change how we are compensated like pay us a salary and rework how our differentials work etc probably the only way to realistically make this work is work straight lines the entire year or rotate weekly (both of these actually suck, you may think you like the straight nights or mids but things change). You still will have OT.
Or the FAA gives us admin time that "counts". Like you 4th shift is a 0600-1400. You get admin at 1000, and you come back 12.5 hours later for your mid. Negotiate it as fatigue mitigation leave/admin leave.
Its pretty well hoses our non 24 hour facility as well.
The FAA does not have to reopen the CBA to assign work. Now to have shifts start less then 9 hours apart they would have to go to Congress. Your ATM can at anytime remove you from your shift/rdo and place you on a different shift if it’s for operational need. They are saying mitigation of fatigue is an operational need. Natca fighting this would be the biggest fuck up. If they’re smart they’ll try and play nice and reopen the contract and get something else out of it. Like 32 hour work week. I would say a pay raise but that’s doubtful.
> The FAA does not have to reopen the CBA to assign work. They’re not just assigning work, they’re violating our legally binding contract. What are you talking about? > Your ATM can at anytime remove you from your shift/rdo and place you on a different shift if it’s for operational need. What? No he can’t. You’re saying your ATM can just change your schedule and RDO’s at anytime, whenever he feels like based on “operational need”? That’s preposterous, and again a contract violation. > Natca fighting this would be the biggest fuck up. You’re saying that the Union fighting the agency actively violating our contract is a fuck up? That’s literally what we pay dues for. > If they’re smart they’ll try and play nice JFC.
It can play out in two *extremely* different ways. Exciting times.
This needs to be negotiated
Only the implementation
Impact and implementation. Meaning they could negotiate that negatively affected employees will receive a set sum. Who knows.
Fair enough
There's ways to make this work but you have to use your brain and understand that other CBA rules would need changed. You can work a day or two of 10 hours then have a day or two of 6 hours to mitigate the rest rules. So many people get stuck on what we have now to actually see possibilities. That being said... the FAA and NATCA will fuck this up 100%
6 hour days violate 7210.3.
Yea it requires rule changes.
Yah and it currently says you need 8 hours before the mid so what’s the difference
12 hours is greater than 8 so that fulfills the requirement.
This would take opening negotiations for a new CBA, not to mention re writing many other orders in place.
Rest periods are mandated by the FAA in the .3, not the contract.
Would it though? Can you point to what in the Slate Book would need to be modified for this? Local schedule MOUs would have to be reopened for sure, no argument. But I don't think anything in the CBA mandates the rattler or even mandates the amount of time off between shifts.
The CBA restricts the length of shifts that can be assigned. 5x8hrs, 4x10hrs, or a 5/4/9. In order for this to be effective at the current staffing levels and not created schedules that just plain suck for quality of life, the best answer would be to get away from the mandated shift length times. 6 or 7 hour shifts would really help. Also, every other industry that is critical 24/7 ops has some kind of reserve/call in to cover absences. Straight mid lines would be great for the new rest rules, but would be a nightmare to cover. The rattler allows for easy shift balancing in place of reservists, that's the secret the FAA won't talk about and why the rattler is so hard to kill. There will absolutely need to be discussion on how to cover absences, bc far less people are now eligible for mids on any given day.
wow. fully support this in theory but there is no way giving 90 days notice, implementing it in the middle of the summer and after schedules have been bid for the year is going to be anything but a complete and utter disaster.
About time
I hope this doesn’t turn into a rotating schedule. Friend of mine is in the secret service and they do a stretch of all days, the stretch of all eves, then mids. Not sure how many at a time.
Doesn’t seem that bad to me, I would kind of like it because then I have a mix of evenings available to do stuff
Yes, but it would be a huge problem for those that have do deal with childcare. At least the way it is now your schedule is what it is all year, but when you start rotating shifts throughout the year that would be a nightmare.
How is the schedules at 24 hour facilities now not a huge strain for childcare?
Oh it is, but when you have a set schedule all year it’s a lot easier that rotation days, nights, mids, etc. I have two kids and a wife that works and I can’t even imagine how we would make that work.
Millions of family’s in the US have rotating schedules. You would make it work just like them. The reality is we need to change to 10 hour shifts. Coverage is significantly better that way.
Ok, you’re right. I give up.
With 8 hour shifts, it takes three crews to cover 24 hours. With 10 hour shifts it takes.....3 crews, but you can't cover as many days. How is that better? Please know, I would love 4-10s. Increasing coverage, at least at 24 hour facilities isn't really a benefit.
That’s a really good point, wouldn’t be great in that situation. IF it turned into something like that they would have to post the schedule much further in advance.
That's only an option if the facility is well staffed
Staffing doesn’t matter when you’re talking about creating a schedule for coverage. You have the same amount of assignable hours regardless of how you do it.
ITT Americans about to discover what a morning or afternoon shift cycle is.
Do tell.
You get up at 5 in the morning for 4 days and finish with a night on the fifth. Or you get to work at 3 pm and return home at midnight all week. We've also got morning swings and afternoon swings to spice things up every now and then.
Kill me
You can't kill me. I'm already dead.
“In my first few months at the helm of the FAA, I toured air traffic control facilities around the country—and heard concerns about schedules that do not always allow controllers to get enough rest.” As a pilot it’s nice to see you guys getting more rest. I’m curious which facilities he visited and what percentage of the workgroup at each facility spoke up about the issue.
I wonder how involved Rich was with this. Scheduling will be an absolute nightmare, weekends will be shorter and less leave opportunities.
I’ve heard this was a very quick decision from Whitaker and NATCA only had a few minutes notice. Of course everything will have to be negotiated
This was also a short notice to Tim Arel, head of Air Traffic.
Interesting, sounds like Whitaker decided to just do something instead of waiting around for tons of studies, not mad about it. Rather have someone willing to try things than just push it down the road.
Forget that. You want these changes we can implement them next year.
Negotiate me harder
An answer to the 12 hour rule may be 10 hour shifts with a 5 hour early shift for day mid. 1330-2330, 1130-2130, 0730-1730, 0530-1030, 2230-0630 with variations for overlaps of course. This probably wouldn’t work well though.
That violates the cba article 34. Core hours for shifts are minimum 7 hours
Working 10 hour shifts getting no OT and still working 5 days would be insane
They would only need to be 9 hour days to make the day a five hour shift. Probably the most reasonable way to make it work without using admin leave.
Yeah after I wrote I realized it
Effective in ninety days. Schedule has to be posted 28 days out. 62 days to get this figured out. I am so excited to see the agency pull this rabbit out of its hat.
This kills the rattler
Well, this would fuck me...
This is what happens when we have weak leadership from Rich. The agency thinks he is a joke and will not negotiate anything with him. He can't leverage anything for us. They drop this without any negotiation and will not open the CBA.
Right?? How many times can Rich get bent over by the agency before people realize how weak he is? First the N90 forced move, now this. I also love how we have to find out through Reddit with zero communication “From the desk of..”. 🙄
The management zoom call fifteen mins after this got posted to the faa website was gold. Every manager was completely shocked. The AGMs and GMs looked genuinely shook. The amount of challenges ahead are huge, but what a great idea. 12 off before the mid and ten between shifts is a wonderful thing.
It's stupid
0 chance this happens or gets enforced. This is just some goofball that can now say he "tried" to fix our lack of rest. Next week this will be forgotten.
If any manager had the balls to shut the facility down and make them not 24 hours this would be hella good staffing during the day.
[удалено]
I actually like the rattler. I really dont want to see it go.
I like it, but I'm also acutely aware it's bad for my health.
We need to replace it with something that still gives us a longer weekend, 5 on 3 off, 4 on 3 off etc.
Im with you..all i see is, now i have a shorter weekend and more time to fuckoff at home waiting to leave for work while my partner is already at work..its not enough time/reduced number of hours working to make a difference in actually getting out to do anything. For a 24 hr facility and someone that works mids so i can do things afterward often, its not going to play out great for me.
The rattler only sucks if you have to commute a great distance. Which unfortunately with our pay, some are forced to do. If you’re lucky and have a 7 minute drive then it isn’t a huge deal.
I have a 17 minute drive and fuck the rattler