Mt. SAC May Be OKd to Certify Air Controllers : Education: Approval would spare students a stint in FAA’s Oklahoma school. Plan is seen as means to increase number of minority and women candidates.

Federal officials are coming to Mt. San Antonio College this week to discuss plans to make the school one of a handful nationwide to offer a fully certified air traffic controller training program.

Approving a Mt. SAC training program would represent a radical departure from past practice for the Federal Aviation Administration, which oversees controller preparation. For the first time, students would be able to qualify for controller jobs without first attending the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City.

For Mt. SAC, the designation as a controller training site would lend prestige to a longstanding aeronautics curriculum that includes programs to train airplane technicians, flight attendants and pilots.

The Walnut community college has offered a two-year degree program in air traffic control since 1971, but the course work served only as background for students who wanted to be controllers. With or without the Mt. SAC degree, a person who wanted to be a controller had to survive a grueling screening program at the Oklahoma academy.

For the FAA, the move toward decentralized training marks a transition away from a system that has come under criticism for being outdated, expensive and slow to produce women and minority controllers.

The current force of 17,500 controllers nationwide is about 92% white and 88% male, according to the FAA. The fall class of 673 students at the Oklahoma City academy was somewhat more balanced: 16.5% minority and 30% women.

“Mt. SAC happens to be in an area that will help us find, attract and train Latinos, others minorities and women,” said Jim Manson, air traffic control manager for the Ontario area.

And because Mt. SAC students would already be accustomed to Southern California’s high cost of living, the FAA hopes that many of the school’s controller trainees would be employed in the area, Manson added.

Other schools awaiting certification by the FAA also were picked, in part, to produce a diverse population of controllers.

Besides Mt. SAC, colleges being considered for certified training programs are in Grand Forks, N.D.; Anchorage, Alaska, and Daytona Beach, Fla. Certified programs have begun at schools in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

FAA officials said they would like to see a training system that could turn out capable controllers more quickly. There still are about 1,000 fewer controllers than when former President Reagan fired striking controllers in 1981.

A revised training system could also save the government money.

At Mt. SAC, students will pay their own tuition or apply for financial aid like students in other departments. At the Oklahoma City academy, the FAA must pay at least $12,500 for each student, said Michael Kruger, who manages the FAA’s higher education and advanced technology department. The investment frequently does not pay dividends because the academy’s dropout rate averages more than 50%, officials say.

The academy’s grueling, eight-week training program includes written tests and laboratory simulations. In the simulations, students must guide a traffic jam of make-believe airplanes through their air space without the benefit of radar.

“You can bang two airplanes together and lose points real quick,” said David West, an Ontario-area controller and Mt. SAC instructor. “It was one of the hardest things I’ve done in my life,” he said.

The non-radar laboratory exercise is a make-or-break test whose time has probably passed, he said.

“Once you leave that place, you’ll never do it again,” West said, since radar is now available at all modern airports.

Academy Supt. R. S. Bartanowicz defended the non-radar lab, saying that only a good controller prospect could survive it. Other FAA officials agree, but add that the test may be unnecessarily difficult and cost the FAA some capable controllers as well.

The Mt. SAC curriculum will include a non-radar lab, but will also devote substantial attention to other portions of a controller’s duties. The two-year Mt. SAC program, which could earn FAA approval this winter, will offer students a slower, less stressful pace.

The program also provides a more well-rounded education to controllers, who are currently required only to complete high school and have three years of job experience. Mt. SAC students have to take courses to enhance their reading and writing skills, as well as basic science and humanities courses.

The school has about 100 students in its as-yet uncertified controller training program. In the last 20 years, Mt. SAC’s flight courses have launched the careers of more than 140 successful controllers, said program supervisor Hank Whitney.

Current instructor West, an Army veteran who made model airplane tires in a rubber factory before becoming a controller, was a 1976 graduate.

He said he looks for intelligence, aggressiveness, individuality and clear thinking in his students.

Managing a sky crowded with fast-moving airplanes at changing altitudes “is like solving a big puzzle,” he said. “You hear a lot about the pressure. (But) we know what we’re doing, and typically we’re very good at it. I can control what I do. If I don’t want to accept a plane in my sky, I don’t do it.”