The Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Office of Inspector General issued their report on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA's) policies and procedures for screening, placing, and initially training newly hired air traffic controllers.

DOT found that the FAA’s process for selecting and placing new controllers does not sufficiently evaluate candidates’ aptitudes because the FAA does not effectively use screening test results or consider candidates’ FAA Academy performance to help determine facility placement.

Air accident investigators have called for a tightening of procedures at London's Heathrow Airport following a collision on the ground between two packed wide-bodied passenger planes.
The runway incident involved a taxiing SriLankan Airlines' Airbus A340 plane with 286 passengers on board and a stationary British Airways' Boeing 747 which was carrying 328 passengers.
Attempting to get past the Boeing plane in the dark, the right wingtip of the Airbus aircraft struck, and knocked off, the BA plane's winglet - an extension to the wingtip, a report by the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) said.
No-one was hurt in the incident at 10.13pm on October 15 2007 but passengers on both aircraft had to be taken off and flown on to their destinations later.

A union representing German air traffic controllers is threatening to stage strikes in a dispute over working conditions.
The GdF union, representing 3,200 Deutsche Flugsicherung employees, said that talks with the Deutsche Flugsicherung agency, which runs air traffic control, had broken down.
It said that the timing and scale of any walkouts would be announced with 24 hours' notice. The dispute centers on working hours.

A new error-reporting program in the nation's air-traffic system is revealing thousands of previously unknown hazards such as dangerous runway crossings and unreported midair problems.

In the year and a half since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) kicked off the program — which guarantees employees immunity in exchange for honest accounts of all but the most serious lapses — the agency has been deluged by more than 14,000 reports.

The reports, which had not been widely released until now, have allowed the FAA to make numerous fixes to festering problems, such as improving signage at critical runway intersections, the agency says. It has also opened a window into what was widely suspected but could never be documented: that far more planes are sent on errant and potentially dangerous tracks than were ever officially reported.

For six months in 2007, Federal Aviation Administration managers at Detroit Metro Airport allowed a pattern of aircraft landings and departures that violated safety rules and potentially put passengers at risk even as air-traffic controllers warned of the danger.
That was the conclusion of the U.S. Department of Transportation's Inspector General's Office, which responded to whistleblower allegations made by air-traffic controller Vincent Sugent.
The Office of Special Counsel sent the findings to Congress and the White House last month, also noting that procedures for segregating jet and propeller aircraft departures were unsafe.
Those procedures are no longer in use at the airport.

The Australian government air service will be adopting Firemint's 'Flight Control' for their training purposes.
Airservices Australia will be using the forthcoming edition of the game iPad to train their potential traffic controllers.
Digital Spy stated that Michael Arbroath, the PR Director of Airservices Australia, spoke out that the 'Flight Control' HD is quite popular amongst their air traffic controllers as a time passing activity during their break time.
He added that the game started to give them hints that guiding little computer planes is actually almost similar to landing real big airplanes, especially with regard to what they like to call the golden rule which is 'Never let the planes collide'.

IFATCA Press Release 29 March 2010

Federal investigators are looking into a near collision over San Francisco between a commercial jet and a small airplane that came within 300 feet of each other.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are looking at Saturday's near-miss between United Airlines Flight 889 to Beijing, China, and a light-wing airplane.
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor says air traffic controllers cleared the United flight for takeoff Saturday morning and quickly spotted a Cessna 182 flying south.
The controller radioed both pilots and the jet's traffic collision avoidance system alerted, causing the jet pilot to level the plane's climb.

A fire inside the control tower at Flint's Bishop International Airport caused the evacuation of air traffic controllers Friday morning.
The tower is located in Flint south of the airport near Maple Road.
No, no one was hurt, but because the fire started on the first floor of the tower and the air traffic controllers were up on the fifth floor, it caused some scary moments and quick action.
Moments after smoke came pouring out of the first floor of the control tower, it was evacuated.
The director of public safety at the airport says air traffic controllers were able to get out safely and partially do their job just outside the control tower.
Mutual aid from Grand Blanc and Mundy Township rushed to the scene to help out. The fire had little to no impact on air passengers at Bishop and all flights were on time.

Newly hired air traffic controllers will have to work an extra five years before retiring if plans to tackle the €234 million hole in their pension funds are adopted, it has emerged.
Eamonn Brennan, chief executive of the Irish Aviation Authority, said the high salaries of controllers had contributed to the multimillion euro pension deficit.
“We are a well-paid organisation,” he told the Oireachtas transport committee yesterday. “The reason the pension fund is in such dire straits is that the salaries are so high.”
The current retirement age for controllers stands at 60. Under the plan, those now aged between 50 and 60 will have to work until 61, the 40-to-50 age bracket will continue until 62, while those aged between 20 and 30 will work until 65. The authority also wants staff to pay pension contributions in line with the Civil Service.