Local airport near San Francisco Bay loses all air traffic control services

y_p_w

y_p_w

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It's San Carlos Airport. Apparently the FAA went into a new contract with an operator, but they wouldn't keep an $18,000 per controller "locality pay" stipend for the high cost of housing. All their controllers declined the offer.

The crisis emerged after Robinson Aviation, or RVA, won the Federal Aviation Administration contract for the airport over longtime provider Serco but declined to match the $18,000 housing stipend controllers receive to offset Bay Area living costs. The FAA and RVA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.​
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“RVA offered a match for hourly pay but did not provide for a stipend for [housing],” said Davi Howard, San Mateo County airport spokesman and former air traffic controller. “The controllers turned down the offer.”​
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The staffing gap puts pressure on one of the region’s busiest general aviation facilities, located 10 miles from SFO. The news came to light after Wednesday’s airplane crash with a military helicopter in Washington, D.C. The flight was asked to pivot and change its course for landing per air traffic controller recordings, the New York Times reports.​

I understand San Carlos Airport is a very busy place for pilot training, and it's also near SFO where it can get pretty hectic. Someone requested temporary controllers from the FAA but were denied.

Other articles mention that this condition is called "ATC Zero" where all normal operations must be suspended.
 
ragtoplvr said:
but that 18K per controller was supposed to towards the new operators "Bonus"
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The article said it was for locality pay, like DOD BAH, locality pay offsets the cost of living in certain locations. I wouldn’t take the job, either, if they failed to offer locality pay.

Say what you want, if nobody took the job, then the pay was too low, and the controllers voted with their feet.
 
The headline "On SFO flight path" is marginally true. San Carlos (SQL) is not aligned with any runway at SFO, so you aren't going to see SFO bound airplanes flying directly over SQL. SQL is also under the shelf of SFO's class B airspace. There isn't a pilot in the world that doesn't understand you must either stay out of SFO's airspace or get permission before you enter. So the scary sounding headline isn't really so scary. Plus, the airspace around the bay area is very complex and no VRF pilot is going to take off fat dumb and happy thinking they can fly anywhere they want. The SQL control tower is also closed from 9:00PM - 7:00AM, but the airport isn't closed. The procedures during the times when the tower is closed revert to uncontrolled field procedures. Every licensed pilot knows how to operate in and out of uncontrolled fields. The article implies that without tower control at SQL, pilots won't be able to avoid SFO. That's just incredibly silly.

The Bay area airspace is about a complex as it gets, plus VRF flights get herded into small corridors by the mountains and airspace. If you operate VRF here, you'd darn well better understand the airspace.

1738278737886.webp
 
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Having flown my little Cessna through that area many times, I concur with @wwillson how busy it is. And that pilots in that area already know what to do. Many of the pilots, including those like me flying little airplanes even if VFR without a flight plan, are still talking to Norcal Approach, flying a charted VFR transition route at specified altitudes.
 
SC Maintenance said:
Boo Hoo. Supply and demand. Too cheap to pay - you don't get your airport.

Good for them. Nice to see workers with some leverage for a change.
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The thing is that the FAA is paying an operator for the service and it's their responsibility to provide the personnel. I would assume that the FAA is paying them commensurate with the cost of doing business but they're hoping to save on operational expenses.
 
y_p_w said:
The thing is that the FAA is paying an operator for the service and it's their responsibility to provide the personnel. I would assume that the FAA is paying them commensurate with the cost of doing business but they're hoping to save on operational expenses.
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Yes, well it sounds like the new bidder won the bid by underestimating the actual costs, or figuring they would just squeeze the staff. Its actually a wonder they were allowed to bid, given they didn't have the required labor under contract already.

Hopefully there is a stiff financial penalty in that contract for failure to perform, and they required a bond to be a approved bidder.
 
There's at least a 60 day reprieve where the the previous contractor has been brought in with a short-term extension of their previous contract.

The FAA announced Thursday that their contract with Serco was ending on Friday and they had awarded a new contract to Robinson Aviation, a company that specializes in air traffic control. However, their controllers rejected their job offers after the company refused to adjust their pay to account for higher living costs in the Bay Area.​
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“To maintain the continuity of air traffic control services at San Carlos Airport, we are extending the prior service provider, Serco, for 60 days,” the FAA said in a statement to the Bay Area News Group.​
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Robinson Aviation was initially supposed to start staffing the tower on Feb. 1. The company called in controllers from other parts of the country to staff the tower by Saturday, said San Carlos Airport spokesperson Davi Howard.​
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The staffing issues raised concerns for aviation enthusiasts. Franco said that an unmanned tower at San Carlos Airport would be a cause for concern due to traffic in the area between smaller planes taking off from the general aviation airport and commercial airlines coming into San Francisco International Airport.​
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