Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) standards for estimating its air traffic controller staffing requirements, focusing on: (1) whether the standards reasonably projected staffing requirements; (2) how FAA used the standards; and (3) how FAA can improve the standards and their use.
GAO found that FAA understated its staffing requirements, since: (1) its controller staffing standards did not adequately reflect work-load complexity, peak traffic conditions, actual operating conditions at terminals and centers, attrition, and training needs; and (2) it used orders rather than computer models to determine its other personnel needs. GAO also found that: (1) Congress offset the possible impact of underestimated staffing needs by authorizing more staffing than FAA requested; (2) FAA adopted the current standards in 1981, but has not yet officially published or effectively communicated them to regional and facility managers; (3) FAA regional and facility managers used their own unvalidated processes and formulas for estimating staffing needs and did not use the current standards as management tools or for productivity measures; and (4) FAA has not revalidated or updated the current standards and has not established a process for doing so.
