Oct. 20--Air traffic controllers at Miami International Airport say a new FAA plan to speed up travel from the northeast will significantly increase their workload and is a "major safety" risk.
Starting next week, in preparation for snowbird traffic, the Federal Aviation Administration is giving airlines more lanes to fly to Miami International Airport. The problem, local controllers say, is that the Miami control tower must merge the traffic -- something it's ill-equipped to do.
"We deem it unwise and refuse to place our users or the flying public at risk," wrote Jose Suarez, local union president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, to the FAA earlier this year.
Doug Molin, the FAA's manager for tactical operations for the southeast, said he understands the tower's complaints. Controllers are being asked to do more work with the same staff, but he said the public won't be put at risk because controllers can handle it.
"I can't argue their points," Molin said. "But we represent the taxpayers. This is safe, and this is efficient."
The FAA is touting the plan -- officially called the Florida Airspace Optimization Project -- as a smart step to untangle chronic delays.
When planes fly to MIA from the northeast today, they usually merge near Daytona Beach into a single line, then fly down the Atlantic coast. Different controllers who handle high-altitude planes are responsible for that maneuver.
The FAA is creating a second stream of traffic for the northeast, requiring controllers in the Miami tower to merge the planes about 30 miles from the airport.
The changes will save the cash-strapped airlines at least $20 million in fuel costs because they will have more direct South Florida routes, the FAA said. For instance, starting Oct. 27, a passenger on a flight from New York City to MIA might travel almost entirely over water instead of hugging the Florida coast for the last hour of their journey.
But Jim Marinitti, the union vice president, said the complexity of the Miami airspace makes the plan unworkable.
"Without a doubt, this is a major safety problem," Marinitti said.
MIA handles incoming traffic from three other points, with controllers also juggling planes from the western United States, the Caribbean and Central and South America. That's in addition to routing planes into Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, also the responsibility of the Miami tower.
The union said its tower is authorized to have 100 controllers, but that only 78 are certified, and 15 are eligible to retire in 10 months.
The union said the FAA ignores their complaints.
Marinitti, the union vice president, points to two recent times union complaints were initially dismissed, then corrected.
The FAA had to change the numbering of MIA's runways in 2003, months after the union warned that a numbering system for a new fourth runway would confuse pilots. Then, the union forced the redesign of a new $25 million-dollar control tower because the design blocked their vision of the airport.
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