TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/81/81patco.1

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                                                                                August 17, 1981

NATION

Turbulence in the Tower


The controllers walk, the President hangs tough, and the planes
(mostly) fly

By Ed Magnuson.  Reported by Gary Lee/Washington and Peter
Stoler/New York, with other U.S. bureaus.


The fateful collision could have been foreseen by any air
controller, without even a glance at the ghostly blips on his
radarscope.  Like a Piper Cub lost in a thunderstorm, the tiny
Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization --
representing 85% of the 17,500 federal employees who direct the
nation's air traffic -- veered wildly off course.  It flew into
a rage against its employer, launching an illegal federal
strike.  An angry Ronald Reagan, revving up the full jumbo-jet
power of the U.S. Government, deliberately bore down on the
defiant union.  The result was inevitable: the controllers
crashed, the U.S. kept flying.

By week's end some 5,100 of PATCO's 13,000 striking
controllers, who earn an average of $33,000 a year, had been
sent dismissal notices by the Federal Aviation Administration.
 Federal judges ordered U.S. marshals to haul five local union
leaders off to jail for defying court injunctions against the
strike.  Some leaders were marched away in handcuffs and
shackled from waist to feet in chains -- standard procedure for
a federal arrest -- adding a note of high drama to the
crackdown.  Some 30 others were ruled in contempt of court and
will be sentenced later.  At the same time, federal judges
levied fines against the union and its leaders that were piling
up at the rate of more than $1 million for each day the strike
continued.  The union's $3.5 million strike fund was frozen.
PATCO was, in effect, broke.

Neither the strike nor the resulting mass firings crippled the
nation's vital air transportation network, though in some areas
and selected sectors of the economy the impact was palpable.
After a confused first day of jammed air terminals, extensive
flight cancellations and runway waits of up to two hours before
takeoff, the FAA's long-prepared contingency plans rapidly
pushed the movement of aircraft back toward normal.  As the
strike wore on, the percentage of airline flights operating as
scheduled showed overall improvement: Monday, 65%; Tuesday, 67%;
Wednesday, 72%; Thursday, 83%.

At first, airport and bus ticket counters were thronged.
Amtrak switchboards were jammed.  Rental car firms found fewer
customers at their airport counters, while at their downtown
offices in large cities, fearful air travelers queued up for
wheels. International passengers had little choice but to wait
out available flights, sometimes camping overnight in
terminals. Businessmen turned to corporate and charter aircraft,
which was not always an improvement; under the FAA's contingency
plans, such planes had a lower priority than the scheduled
carriers. But as the week progressed, even the reduced number
of flights held more capacity than the fewer passengers could
fill.  The airport crowds vanished, counter service notably
improved.  Said Traveler Bob Barnett of Santa Monica, Calif.:
"The L.A. airport was about as mellow as I've seen it in 15
years."

At week's end the FAA ordered the nation's 22 largest airports
to cut scheduled flights back to 50% for at least a month in
order to reduce any delays and ensure safety.  The agency also
announced plans to triple the number of new air controllers it
trains, currently 1,800 a year, and began accepting
applications for the jobs once held by the fired PATCO strikers.
 In New York City alone, 1,763 people signed up in the first
five hours.  The Government was preparing to fly without PATCO
forever.  Declared a confident Transportation Secretary Drew
Lewis, who piloted that strike-breaking course under close White
House supervision: "To all intents and purposes, the strike is
over.  Our concern is to rebuild the system."

Some 3,000 supervisors and 2,000 nonstriking or nonunion
controllers were manning the towers and radar centers that
monitor U.S. air flights.  A backup force of some 500 military
controllers, out of an available pool of 10,000, rushed to
major air centers.  They began studying civilian control
procedures, and would begin to take up shifts this week if
needed.  Up to 700 military controllers can be reassigned to
civilian posts with only a minimal effect on military
operations; if the FAA needed more than 700, selective cutbacks
in military flights would be required.

The strikers, as stubborn and high-spirited a bunch as ever hit
the bricks, did not, of course, concede defeat.  Despite the
overwhelming Government pressure, they continued to picket
airports from LGA (La Guardia) to LAX (Los Angeles
International), rallying behind their bearded, owlish-looking
president Robert E. Poli in an unusual show of solidarity.
Poli, 44, a former controller himself, called the
Administration's actions: "the most blatant form of
union-busting I have ever seen."  Vowed he: "It will not end the
strike."

The controllers predicted that the air system cannot survive
long without them and that the fines and firings, which do not
become final until a lengthy civil service appeals process is
completed, will be lifted once this becomes apparent.
Meanwhile, as Air Controller Eric Sletten said on a picket line
at Miami International Airport: "Reagan's hard line is just
hardening our line."

That seemed to be true.  The union's abrupt walkout and the
Administration's swift retaliation had left neither side any
face-saving way to resume negotiations, particularly since the
Government considered the bulk of PATCO's constituency no
longer strikers but simply among the unemployed.  The FAA even
took steps to decertify PATCO as the legal bargaining agent for
the controllers.  Justifiably confident that public opinion was
solidly on his side and still basking in his legislative
triumphs on Capitol Hill, the President massed a historic show
of force against the first labor union to challenge his
Administration directly.  Ironically, PATCO had been one of the
few unions to support him for election last fall.

Reagan's tough reaction to the strike was reminiscent of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's wartime order to draft striking coal
miners in 1943, then to have the Government seize and operate
the mines. When rail unions struck that same year, Roosevelt put
the War Department in charge of the railroads.  Harry Truman
similarly ordered strike-bound coal mines seized in 1946,
railroads in 1950 and steel mills in 1952.  Richard Nixon in
1970 sent military troops into post offices where federal
employees had illegally left their jobs.  Still, taking on the
controllers was not quite as difficult as facing down coal,
steel, railroad and postal workers -- who have far more members
and political clout than does PATCO. (Calvin Coolidge, whose
picture decorates the Reagan Cabinet room, earned a national
reputation as Massachusetts Governor in 1919 for breaking a
Boston police strike.  But as President, Coolidge declined to
take on striking coal miners in 1927.)

Actually, Reagan had wanted to move even faster against the air
controllers, but was restrained by his aides.  The President's
impulse on the day before the strike was to warn that all the
strikers would be fired.  His advisers suggested that since the
walkout had not begun, such a statement would be both
provocative and premature.  Secretary Lewis, who found the
controllers dangerously "whipped up," cautioned: "It could have
given them a point to rally behind -- that we were using a
pretty big gun to force them to sign."

Reagan checked his anger and held his fire until after the
strike was under way on Monday morning.  Summoning reporters
and photographers to the White House Rose Garden, he read a
gently phrased statement.  "I respect the right of workers in
the private sector to strike," he said.  "Indeed, as president
of my own union, I led the first strike ever called by that
union [the Screen Actors Guild, 1959]."  But Government, he
said, "has to provide without interruption the protective
services which are Government's reason for being."  He noted
that Congress (in 1947) passed a law forbidding strikes by
Government employees.  He read aloud the nonstrike oath that
each air controller, and indeed any federal employee, must sign
upon hiring, and said of the strikers: "They are in violation
of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours,
they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated."

While forceful, the President was not vindictive.  "Dammit," he
said privately to his aides, including Chief of Staff James
Baker and Counsellor Ed Meese, "the law is the law, and the law
says they can't strike.  By striking they've quit their jobs."
 Later, Reagan noted publicly that the air controllers were
"fine people," and added: "I do feel badly.  I take no joy in
this. There is just no other choice."

Though Reagan seemed to be taking a safe and popular course in
facing down the controllers, failure to do so could have been
costly.  For one thing, other federal unions -- most of them
quite small, but a few, including the postal workers, strong
and increasingly restive -- were warily watching the
Administration's attitude toward Government strikers.  Said one
Reagan aide, drawing a rather far-fetched analogy: "If you cave
in to a group like this, that has a stranglehold on public
safety, what do you do, for example, when the Army wants to
strike?  It's the same thing."  The President also could not
permit a strike to shut down the air industry at a time when his
entire economic recovery program is newly enacted and is about
to take effect.

But if the battle was primarily between the President and the
controllers, the general public was a much involved third
party. An unsettling question formed in millions of minds: Just
how safe are the skies when substitute controllers -- and,
eventually, military specialists unfamiliar with generally
heavier civilian air traffic -- are manning the towers and
scopes?  In addition, how long could the supervisors stand the
strain?

Federal aviation experts -- including Lewis, a lawyer and
licensed pilot, and FAA Administrator Lynn Helms, former
chairman of Piper Aircraft Corp. and an experienced test pilot
-- insisted that the system was as safe as ever.  Noting that
traffic was down at the nation's airports, some airline pilots
contended that this actually made flying less hazardous than
before the strike. At busy airports, like Chicago's O'Hare
International, aircraft were required to stay 20 miles behind
another plane approaching a landing, rather than the usual five
miles; planes taking off had to wait five minutes instead of the
normal one minute or less before rolling down the runway after
another had left.

The striking controllers, however, contend that the supervisors
are generally older men (in their mid-40s vs. mid-30s for rank-
and-file controllers) who may have grown rusty at manning the
scopes and who may tire once the initial exhilaration of
stepping into an emergency situation wears off.  Initially they
were working 12-hr. daily shifts vs. the controllers usual
40-hr. week.  At week's end, Helms ordered that no control
tower employee should work more than 48 hours a week.  As for
the military replacements, many of the strikers themselves
first learned their trade in the service, typically during the
Vietnam era.  Some contend that the shift to civilian duties
was difficult for them.  Said Poli, somewhat menacingly, about
the fill-in system last week: "I hope that nothing happens."
But if it does, he suggested, "the Government is responsible."

The argument scarcely returns the blood to the knuckles of
those millions of airline passengers who are jittery about
flying under the best of circumstances.  TIME Correspondent
Madeleine Nash, who has been following air-controller operations
at Chicago's O'Hare for several years, last week found a marked
change in the mood of the pressure-packed tower crews 200 ft.
above the runways, as well as in the darkened radar room 20 ft.
underground.

"There is a swaggering style, a macho flair to O'Hare's ace
controllers.  In near darkness, they hunch over their
radarscopes like teen-age boys playing electronic games.  Their
faces glow in the greenish-yellow light, as each sweep of the
radar reveals a constantly changing configuration of planes.
They have developed their own special mystique.  They chain
smoke and drink countless cups of coffee while placating their
upset stomachs with chalky Maalox tablets from the big glass
candy jars that are standard in every control room.

"During a thunderstorm, the controllers' voices, while crisp
and professional, take on a raw edge.  Their instructions to
pilots are shot out in staccato bursts with no pauses.  As
tension mounts, profanity flows like water -- though the pilots
do not hear it.  They understate their shared fears.  'Delta,
is your heart beating as fast as mine?' a controller will ask
with his mike shut off.  'C'mon, you turkey,' another will say
about a slow-responding aircraft.  'Who's got Eastern?' one
controller will shout.  'Let's get him the hell out of there.'

"Last week the swaggering kids were gone.  In their place were
gray-haired men wearing ties.  There was a staff of 15 rather
than the usual 24 -- and all but one was a supervisor.  The
atmosphere was more somber than usual.  The pace was slower,
with long pauses between spoken words.  But even the supervisors
could not resist breaking into joke-cracking tower talk.
Referring to a pregnant female colleague handling departure
control, one temporary quipped: 'I've told her we're keeping her
till her pains are six minutes apart.'"

Basically, however, the controller's job is a lonely, stressful
ordeal.  He stares at his scope and gives instructions to
pilots, who, as ultimate commanders of their own aircraft, can
ignore the advice.  But responsibility for the lives of all
those airborne s.o.b.s (souls on board, in controller lingo)
weighs heavily. They see that constant burden as no less than
that of the pilots aloft.  Though the jobs are not all that
comparable, many of the young controllers resent the higher pay
(reaching $115,000) and greater prestige of the airline
skippers.  "You know how much pilots make," said Striker Matt
Blum, 26, as he picketed at O'Hare.  "They're flying an airplane
with 150 on board, and they're using automatic pilot.  We're
sitting at a scope working ten airplanes at one, with 150 people
on each plane.  We have more responsibility, and we spend more
time working."  So why did Blum become a controller?  "It looked
like pinball machines in a penny arcade."  He adds, somewhat
contrarily, "And controllers make good money."  Blum's base pay
is $27,000 a year.

Jealous of the pilots, fearful of being worn slowly down by the
stresses and responsibilities of their own task -- yet proud of
their skills and fascinated by the space-age gadgetry they have
mastered -- the controllers gradually came to the conclusion
that they had been taken for granted too long.  The Government
would have to be taught a lesson.

The air controllers have long been unhappy about what they
perceived as the sluggish pace at which the FAA supplied them
the modern equipment needed to cope with increasingly crowded
skies. They felt that nearly all their job-related complaints
were being ignored by the FAA when they were represented by the
National Association of Government Employees, which included a
myriad of other federal workers as well.  The controllers broke
away, forming PATCO in 1968, partly at the urging of F. Lee
Bailey, the noted criminal lawyer, who is a pilot himself.
PATCO's first president was John Leyden, a New York controller
who in the late '60s had been honored by the FAA as its
"controller of the year."

Complaining that airline traffic was up sharply while the
number of controllers was not, some 450 of them protested in
June 1969 by staying home for two days, claiming to be sick.
The FAA declared that PATCO had encouraged the sickout and that
it would no longer recognize the union.  For three weeks in the
spring of 1970, some 3,000 controllers claimed illness and
stayed off the job.  "We had no equipment -- it was dangerous,
dangerous," recalls Carl Vaughn, 45, a Pittsburgh controller.
 "Little or no automation had been introduced, and near misses
were a common occurrence."  The FAA reacted by firing some 100
local PATCO leaders and temporarily suspending most of the
sickout participants.  Still, the FAA seemed to get the
controllers' point; automated radar gear was gradually installed
at major centers.  To regain certification as a bargaining unit,
PATCO in 1971 formally pledged never again to encourage a work
stoppage or engage in a strike.  At the time, only about 3,000
controllers remained in the union.

As air traffic continued to grow, so did the controllers'
concerns about stress and safety, and so did PATCO.  By the
mid- 70s, the union had nearly 15,000 members -- all but 2,000
of the entire staff of qualified FAA controllers.  The union
grew increasingly militant as rank-and-file members felt that
each new contract failed to meet their same old demands for more
reliable equipment, less grueling shift schedules and more pay.

A turning point came last year when both Leyden and the union's
longtime vice president, Poli, turned in resignations to
PATCO's executive committee in response to the mounting
membership complaints.  The board accepted Leyden's, but not
Poli's. Explained Controller Vaughn: "In Leyden's day, there was
no better union leader.  But in the end he didn't hang tough.
 He didn't want a strike.  Poli stood up to it all."  Added
another controller: "Leyden had our hearts, but Poli understands
us."

Elevated to the presidency, Poli took his reputation as a
militant seriously.  A hearty eater and drinker, the 6-ft.
2-in. Pittsburgh native usually speaks calmly and always
clearly.  "I am not a ranter or a raver or a stomper," he says.
 "I am frank and straightforward."  One critic calls him "a
brash bastard," while one follower considers him "a helluva
father figure."  Poli does not apologize for, in effect, pushing
his friend Leyden aside.  "We could see there might be cause to
strike," he explains coolly.  "I knew I would be ready for it,
and John might not be."

Still, a strike seemed far from inevitable when negotiations
between PATCO and the FAA began last February.  Technically,
the FAA is not like a private employer in such talks; anything
it agreed to would have to be approved by Congress.  Poli opened
the bargaining by presenting 96 demands, a list the FAA's Helms
understandably dismissed as excessive.  Yet the union was truly
serious about three of its concerns:

WAGES.  Poli asked for a $10,000 across-the-board annual
increase for all controllers.  Their pay now ranges from $20,462
-- the starting salary at some 100 unhurried airports serving
small cities -- to $49,229.  The wages increase with the
difficulty of the job (starting pay at one of the busy
"birdcages" near New York, Chicago and Los Angeles is $37,000).
 On top of that, Poli wanted a twice-a-year cost-of-living
increase that would be 1 1/2 times the rate of inflation.  The
FAA offered a $4,000 wage hike, which would have included a
$1,700 increase as part of the 4.8% raise given all federal
employees this year.

WORK WEEK.  Poli sought to cut the five-day 40-hr. week back to
a four-day 32-hr. schedule -- a reduction the controllers seem
to want more than pay increases.  While they apparently would
not accept a salary cut to compensate the Government for their
reduced hours, most PATCO members see this issue as the key to
lowering their on-the-job anxieties and enhancing safety.  The
Government at first refused to consider any shortened work
week, fearing that similar demands from other federal workers
would start a budget-busting trend at a time of general spending
cuts.

RETIREMENT.  Claiming that controllers burn out faster than
other federal employees, PATCO sought an earlier retirement age
and higher pension benefits.  At present a controller can retire
with half pay at age 50 if he has worked for 20 years, and at
any age after serving 25 years.  Poli asked that retirement be
permitted to any controller after 20 years of work and with 75%
of his base salary.  The Government adamantly opposed this
demand as contrary to its entire drive to hold the line against
future Government expenses.

After neither side budged during 2 1/2 months of fruitless
talks, Poli said on May 22 that his members would walk out a
month later if there were no "acceptable" Government proposal
by then.  The Administration responded by sending Secretary
Lewis to replace Helms, whom the PATCO negotiators considered
hopelessly rigid, as its chief bargainer.

Just before the June 22 deadline, Lewis offered a $40 million
package of improvements.  It included a 10% pay hike for
controllers who also act as instructors, an increase in the pay
differential for nighttime work to 20% from the present 10%,
and a guaranteed 30-min. lunch period (controllers often munch
sandwiches at their scopes when there is too much traffic for
a break).  Poli found the package insultingly stingy.

Poli, however, knew he did not have 80% of all controllers
behind him to win a strike vote, as required by PATCO's rules.
 After eleventh-hour dickering, he gained extra retraining
benefits for medically disqualified controllers and
time-and-a-half pay after 36 hours, though the work week
remained at 40 hours.  With that, PATCO negotiators called off
the strike and put the settlement up for a vote.  It was
rejected by 95% of PATCO's members.

When new talks began on July 31, PATCO negotiators claimed that
they had reduced the cost of their demands from $1.1 billion to
about $500 million.  The FAA computed the union package at $681
million -- some 17 times the cost of the settlement Poli had
provisionally accepted earlier.  Poli, on the other hand,
insisted that the federal negotiators "gave us an ultimatum:
take their original offer, which had been overwhelmingly
rejected by our people, or leave it.  We had no choice but to
leave it." After a final weekend in which both sides stubbornly
repeated their frozen positions, the strike began.

When the Administration reacted with its fine-and-fire-'em
ultimatum, top Government officials fully expected at least
half of the PATCO controllers to heed the warnings and return
to work. But by week's end only 1,260 had gone back to their
posts, while fully 80% of the PATCO members still were staying
home.

Their defiant stand in the face of the law, and in repudiation
of their own employee oaths, was a lonely one.  As a strike of
taxpayer-supported employees -- and such relatively well-paid
ones at that -- it drew little public sympathy.  One supporter
was the American Civil Liberties Union, which declared that
"the right to strike is a fundamental civil liberty and should
not be denied to public employees any more than to private
ones."  More significantly, organized labor around the world
rallied behind PATCO, an AFL-CIO affiliate.  Controllers in half
a dozen countries caused delays in flights to and from the U.S.
 At home, the support was mostly verbal.  Accusing Reagan of
"harsh and brutal overkill," AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland
argued that every worker, individually and collectively, has the
right to withhold his services.  Said he: "You don't solve the
problem by passing a law that says it's illegal."

Kirkland led a caravan of top union officials, who were
attending an AFL-CIO executive council meeting in Chicago, to
join cheering PATCO pickets at O'Hare.  The labor leaders
included United Auto Workers President Douglas Fraser and
William Winpisinger, president of the machinists' union that
handles airline baggage and services the big jets -- duties
that, if stopped, could quickly ground most of the planes.
Winpisinger urged Reagan to stop "union busting" and to "get
rational and sit down to negotiate an agreement."

Privately, however, the labor leaders were highly critical of
Poli for calling an unpopular strike with so little warning and
without seeking the help or advice of other veteran union
strategists.  The controllers' strike, conceded Fraser, "could
do massive damage to the labor movement.  That's why PATCO
should have talked to the AFL-CIO council."  The machinists were
not crossing PATCO picket lines, but at most airports they could
get to their jobs without doing so.  If more flights are
curtailed by the strike, the machinists fear that airlines will
cut back their jobs.  The Air Line Pilots Association, another
AFL-CIO union, had not joined the strike.  Reflecting such
inter-union strains, Winpisinger said that the pilots could lose
half their jobs, too, and added tartly: "They ought to be a
little bit more excited about it than us, since they make 2 1/2
times as much as we do."

Poli was also criticized by other unionists for failing to try
to explain the issues to members of Congress and for even
refusing the offer of a public relations firm to help him get
his union's story across to the public.  Said one labor insider
about Poli: "He may be a good traffic controller, but he is over
his head as an administrator and political strategist."  A
former PATCO official said acidly of Poli: "He's taking his
members on a trip to Jonestown with a few gallons of Kool-Aid."

Despite a genuine spirit of camaraderie, the picket lines were
not without expressions of fear and even some criticism of
Poli's strategy.  At New Jersey's huge Newark Airport, a
controller with eight years experience said sadly, "I never
thought it would come to this.  I thought Reagan was bluffing."
 Poli, he said, should have taken the court injunctions banning
the strike as a reason to surrender with honor.  "He could have
said that he didn't want to give the Federal Government an
excuse to bust the union and that he was ordering us back under
protest.  I think he blew it." Sandi Engel, a controller at
Illinois' busy Aurora center, is married to a union welder who
opposes the strike.  Says she: "Every morning he tells me, 'What
you're doing is illegal. You're going to jail.'"

Any doubts, however, seemed much in the minority.  At a noisy
PATCO rally in Hollis, N.H., Controller Joe Gannon, 39, noted
the nonstrike oath he had taken but observed: "I have a much
higher oath.  I could not bring myself to the position of
handling all those aircraft under the stresses I was being
subjected to, knowing that I was affecting hundreds of lives.
 I had a moral obligation."  (Not all labor protests require a
high decibel count.  Last week members of West Germany's
Bavarian State Opera struck in their own fashion: In Act III of
Die Meistersinger, to the astonishment of the audience, they
simply walked through their parts, mouthing their lyrics without
making a sound.) Picketing at New York's J.F.K. Airport, Pat
Hagen, 36, said firmly: "Some of us may go to jail.  I don't
think I'd be normal if I wasn't frightened, but I'm not
intimidated.  This union is tight, almost like a family."
Walking beside him was his own family, Wife Diane and three
children.  Said she: "I can tell when he walks in the door, by
the slant of his shoulders and the way he's holding his head,
that he's had a bad day."

Almost unanimously, certainly wishfully, the striking
controllers predict that the Administration's plans to replace
them will not work.  Contended Controller Dick Holzhauer at an
Oakland, Calif., radar center: "If we hang together, I know they
can't run the system without us.  They're going to want their
pound of flesh, but they'll settle."  Asked Controller Roger
Hicks at Houston Intercontinental Airport: "Where are they going
to get 13,000 controllers and train them before the economy
sinks?  The reality is, we are it.  They have to deal with us."

Both Secretary Lewis and the FAA;s Helms argue that the
striking controllers can be safely replaced, though Lewis
concedes that air traffic would have to be reduced from former
levels for as long as 21 months.  Lewis claims that last week's
experience shows that, contrary to the controllers' decade-old
refrain, the 17,500-controller system is overstaffed, perhaps
by as many as 3,000 workers.  Another 3,000 supervisors as well
as 2,000 nonstrikers were working.  Lewis would also close as
many as 60 small airport towers, freeing 1,000 controllers for
other duty. These closings began last week.  Thus, in the end,
7,500 new controllers would have to be hired and trained.

All that would take time, though Lewis claimed that some 20,000
people have inquired about becoming controllers since the
strike began.  The FAA's Oklahoma City training school was
considering a triple-shift, six-day weekly schedule in which it
could produce more than 5,500 graduates in a year, even allowing
for the normal failure rate of 20%.

Can the U.S. air-control system undergo nearly a complete
change of staff and still function safely?  The sheer magnitude
of the undertaking would suggest not, at least for a while.  Yet
Jerome Lederer, founder of the private Flight Safety Foundation
and one of the nation's most respected aerospace safety experts,
is confident that it can.  He warns, however, that all the
operators of aircraft, from corporate jets to jumbo airliners
and giant cargo planes, must "not be permitted to overload the
system." The FAA vows to keep traffic limited to the ability of
the substitute, newly developing staff to handle it.  That will
mean grave inconveniences in a jet-dependent age, but, carefully
done, probably no serious diminutions in the standards that have
made America's air-traffic control system the best in the world.

For a public that may need constant reassurance, there will be
an independent, ongoing reliable source; the airline pilots
themselves.  The moment the strike began, their own union,
ALPA, started monitoring every flight's safety conditions.  Says
ALPA President John J. O'Donnell: "So long as airline pilots
continue to fly their appointed routes, the public can be
assured it is safe."