Thursday, July 28, 2005

 

With a Tangled Skein: Part 2

Now let’s talk about those pilot response metrics that AOPA President Phil Boyer is fond of repeating, and let’s start with one overriding caveat; while one of his favorite phrases is “It’s in the contract,” Mr. Boyer doesn’t know what the contract actually says. He’s never seen it. No one has, outside of a small group in the FAA and the LM bid team. All Mr. Boyer can do is parrot whatever they tell him.

But let’s take the metric points (found here) one at a time.

1) “…pilots — the "customers" — must be satisfied with the ‘quality, timeliness, accuracy, customer service, and relevance of overall and specific services received.’” In case Mr. Boyer has forgotten AOPA’s own commissioned survey, pilots already are. You can find the survey here, but in a nutshell, pilots grouped by experience and qualifications are 80-90% satisfied with the quality and kinds of service provided by FSSs.

2) “[Phone] calls have to be answered within 20 seconds.” – While we don’t know exactly what the contract says, it’s safe to assume that either this is an average, or refers to a certain percentage of calls. Since no one knows the contract, we can’t be sure. But under either scenario, this metric as already largely met by existing FSSs.

One myth Mr. Boyer seems to have enjoyed creating is that pilots are routinely “…stuck on hold for 20 minutes trying to get a weather briefing…" The only place this might occur is when a pilot attempts to go into or out of the Washington D.C. ADIZ. The delay is not due to weather or equipment. Rather, security procedures required by the FAA and Homeland Defense make the process long and cumbersome. The remaining FSSs never experience such hold times, and may reach 5 minutes only under a combination of extreme circumstances.

One might also quibble with the phrase “have to be answered.” Does that mean actual contact with the controller who will provide the briefing, or entry into a service menu?

3) “…pilots are to receive service within 15 seconds of a radio call. Pireps must be processed within 30 seconds of receipt, 15 seconds if they are urgent.” I’m not sure how this is going to be possible to guarantee under the following common circumstances: multiple pilots call at once drowning each other out; improper call-ups that don’t include a frequency, location, or control facility trying to be reached. What if the In-flight specialist is coding a PIREP he just received and another call or two comes in? Does he finish the PIREP or service the pilot(s)? If the controller receives a second call prior to servicing a first call just received and tells the second one to ‘stand-by’, is the metric violated? Again, we must know what the contract says to determine how these circumstances will be dealt with.

4) “Flight service briefers must have "knowledge and skills specific to the flight plan areas that a given employee is servicing." In other words, they're supposed to know about unique local weather conditions, terrain, and airspace. They'll be tested.” Controllers already know these things and are tested. It is an insult for Mr. Boyer to suggest otherwise. What will be new is the loss of practical experience; how to interpret the effect of changing patterns on current conditions in a particular area. It takes a few seasons to gain an understanding of how all these things work together. This will be even more questionable if the controller’s three knowledge areas are not adjacent. Yet Mr. Boyer thinks he’ll have ‘experienced’ controllers skilled in dissimilar areas in a few months. This is a further indication that Mr. Boyer (and LM as well) simply does not understand the nature of this service. It’s not enough to know how to read a map or a weather report, which is what this metric (as stated) calls for.

These last two posts have been lengthy yet only begin to cover the topic of how things will change for pilots. These changes will not happen immediately, but there’s little doubt that Flight Service’s most important factor, the ability to interpret weather patterns, is going to be diluted.

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