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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

If you live in the Bay Area on the Peninsula, you'll be excited to know that the San Carlos airport and the FAA are in a pissing match over their air traffic controllers' pay, threatening to un-staff the control tower and leave that very busy airspace without tower control. The tower was set to go dark on Feb 1st[1] but it looks like there is now a temporary extension[2] keeping it staffed. Why these guys need to play a game of chicken when lives are at stake, I have no idea.

1: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/bay-area-airport-losing-...

2: https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/san-carlos-airport-reach...

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I don't get why lives are at stake here. Surely the consequence of reduced ATC coverage means less flights moving through the area, not the same amount of flights being managed by fewer people?

There's only additional risk if you treat the amount of planes in an area as some kind of inevitable force of nature. If an area isn't safe because of a lack of staff, flights can be canceled to reduce the load on remaining staff without impacting safety.

Sucks for the people who bought a ticket, but a canceled flight is a lot better than dying in a plane crash.

From what I heard the San Carlos controller were pissed that their pay was being drastically reduced - especially considering its not a cheap area to live in.

I still don't understand why KSQL is a contract tower and not a full FAA-managed tower.

Did the call sign go to KSQL because of Oracle being right there?

No it predates Oracle, including when it was still called Software Development Laboratories.

Contract towers in general are a terrible idea. The level of service is consistently lower than FAA towers.

I'm confused.

Why would the FAA be involved in locality pay or staffing a Contract Tower? I thought the whole point of Contract Towers was a private company staffed and paid them and the FAA merely dispersed the contractual amount to the company.

The FAA chooses the contractor, and, according to the article:

> The contract, however, did “not include locality pay to account for the high cost of living in the San Francisco Bay Area.” This resulted in the new offer to SQL’s air traffic controllers coming in “significantly lower” than their current compensation, according to the county.

Is the contract referenced the one between the FAA and RVA or the contract between RVA and the existing controllers?

Is this just RVA trying to lowball controllers? I can't imagine their contract with the FAA specify the maximum amount they would pay their own controllers.

Frankly, if RVA can't fulfill their contract, then they should be penalized and have their contracts stripped. Given the contract is for several hundred million dollars and multiple airports, I imagine they'll figure out a way to add a housing stipend back in.

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