One trainee issues traffic information correctly but "a bit too late;" loses job after passing two prior evaluations.


New commentary about the FAA Academy tower training class, which ended July 7, 2017, has appeared online. At least one student who washed out of the program has provided meaningful insight into his experience at the FAA Academy. The trainee points out with accuracy numerous systemic failures in the training and evaluating of trainee air traffic controllers at the FAA Academy. It seems that FAA officials have succeeded in indoctrinating this trainee into believing that they are supreme beings, that they are always right, and that he should blindly accept their will. This is blatant propaganda that has been going on at the FAA Academy for far too long.

Trainees at the FAA Academy are federal government employees, appointed on a temporary and probationary basis. Their "temporary"" status is upgraded to "permanent" upon their successful completion of FAA Academy training. Following one year of employment with the FAA, trainees are no longer considered probationary. The first step to continued employment with the FAA is passing the FAA Academy, an institution wrought with fraud and mismanagement as it pertains to the way it treats its trainees.

Following approximately 15 weeks of classroom training, students in the FAA Academy Tower program, a program designed to teach trainees bound for control towers at airports all across the U.S. the fundamentals of air traffic control, are trained in simulators manufactured by Adacel. The FAA Academy owns 14 of these simulators, all of which are wrought with problems that this site has highlighted for months. Simulator training occurs for 2 weeks. At the conclusion of these 2 weeks, FAA Academy trainees undergo a series of 4, 30-minute evaluations, which determine whether or not these trainees will be able to continue their employment with the FAA. 90% of a trainee's grade is based on these 2 hours of evaluations.

The evaluations are graded by employees of the FAA, people who perhaps once controlled air traffic at field facilities but have since been disqualified to do so for medical or other reasons. These evaluators do not participate in the trainees' training process at any point during the preceding 18 weeks, nor do they provide classroom instruction or training to trainees on their own. These latter two points are large issues that cause friction between FAA Academy instructors, who are former controllers-turned-trainers employed by FAA contractor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC, formerly Raytheon), and FAA Academy evaluators, who are federal employees only tasked with evaluating the trainees.

Oftentimes, there are vast disconnects between what a trainee is told during training and how he is graded during evaluations. This is highly problematic for the trainee, because any disagreement regarding techniques or procedures that are to be applied when controlling air traffic in the FAA Academy's simulators has the potential to derail a trainee's career as an air traffic controller. The severity to which points are deducted from trainees are highlighted by this trainee's story.

Some evaluators evaluate differently than others. The [evaluation scenarios] seem to be all the same difficulty. I had a chunk taken for calling traffic "a little bit too late" according to my evaluator, so that [cost me] 16 points. According to my evaluator my traffic was good but apparently not good enough.

Air traffic controllers at control towers across the U.S. issue "traffic information" to pilots as a means of assisting those pilots with their duty to see and avoid other air traffic. Seeing and avoiding other traffic is the responsibility of pilots, but controllers assist pilots in fulfilling this responsibility by informing pilots of the locations of other aircraft. (This is different in radar facilities, where radar controllers do assume some aircraft separation responsibilities.)

An example of traffic information is "Aircraft 1, traffic [is a] Cessna, ahead and to your left, on final [for] Runway 28R." (Words in brackets are typically excluded for the sake of brevity on air traffic control radio frequencies.) This brief statement helps the pilot of Aircraft 1 (which goes by a different more technical name in the simulator and in real life) spot the traffic, thereby helping him see and avoid it.

The evaluator in this trainee's story allegedly admitted this trainee's "traffic [call] was good." In other words, the trainee used the correct phraseology in advising Aircraft 1 about the other aircraft. However the evaluator allegedly stated what the trainee did was "not good enough." It is doubtful the evaluator provided the trainee with any additional insight into how he made that determination. Nevertheless, the trainee lost 16 points for this one error -- on an evaluation that has only 100 points to begin with.

The trainee makes several additional statements in his review which strike to the heart of this matter:

I do believe that a majority of those who did not pass are more than capable to do the job and do it right.

Ask most of the trainees who washed out from the FAA Academy about this subject, and you will hear the same response. The FAA Academy systemically terminates trainees who are good at what they do, who score well during all measures of training leading up to evaluations, and who would make great air traffic controllers.
[T]he sims back up in transmissions, and that can hurt you in your PA's.

This speaks to yet another fault of the FAA Academy's tower simulators. The FAA has engineered evaluation scenarios to be so complex, with so many aircraft attempting to call the trainee for air traffic control services, that the simulator's voice synthesizer literally cannot keep up with the volume of transmissions it needs to speak to the trainee. What results is an endless stream of transmissions from the simulator, which disallows the trainee from cutting in and issuing instructions. This can certainly hurt trainees during their performance assessments (PAs), the technical term for FAA Academy evaluations. In order for a trainee to demonstrate his abilities, he needs to be able to speak back to the simulator -- which cannot happen when the simulator is endlessly talking to him.
One thing we can all agree on is the system can be operated more effective[ly] and efficiently.

Unfortunately, the only people who can agree with that statement are people not in charge of the FAA Academy. Officials at the FAA Academy are perfectly content with their taxpayer wasting, common sense-less criteria for evaluating trainees. The FAA Academy has been evaluating trainees this way since 2014 when it instituted the Performance Assessment grading system into its tower training program. Only high-level FAA officials know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars have been wasted as a result of the FAA terminating trainees who are perfectly suited and capable of working in air traffic control towers nationwide. While this waste, fraud, and abuse goes on week after week, FAA control towers across the United States continue to face a massive backlog of air traffic controllers -- virtually all of whom must start out as trainees following graduation from the FAA Academy.

Ask yourself: Does a trainee who otherwise performs perfectly well at the FAA Academy but for one 30-minute evaluation deserve to be terminated for issuing traffic information "a bit too late" during an evaluation in a simulator? Consider that training one trainee costs the government over $35,000 excluding the trainee's measly salary, benefits, and per diem. Consider the rampant problems with those simulators, which this site has highlighted earlier this year. Consider that the FAA Academy doesn't issue certifications for controlling air traffic in the field. Consider that the trainee would need to undergo 6 months to 3 years of on-the-job training with certified air traffic controllers at his or her first facility before being allowed to control air traffic in a real control tower. Consider that the FAA Academy tower simulators are essentially just a game, designed to see if trainees are capable of becoming good trainees for field facilities.

Where is the common sense here? Where is the fiscal responsibility? Where are Congress and the DOT Inspector General on these issues?

Find your representatives and write to them. Tell them that trainees at the FAA Academy deserve to be fairly evaluated. Tell them we deserve to know why "sudden death" is the standard way of evaluating FAA Academy trainees. Ask them why no other government agency, including the dozens of federal law enforcement agency academies in Quantico, VA, evaluates its employees this way. Tell them you want FAA officials held accountable for their decisions. Demand an investigation.