Air Traffic Control and Sequester....

Just read a story, http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/04/21/delays-hit-major-us-airports-as-control-tower-furloughs-kick-in/, that states that the FAA is "expected to save about $200 million of the $637 million the agency must cut from its $16 billion budget"
as a result of sequester furloughs that started on 4/21/2013. It goes on to say that the furloughs are expected to last through 9/30, which is the end of FY 2013. That sounded a bit fishy to me (most statistics like this do actually) so I decided to whip out Excel and poke around.

Ok, $200,000,000 saved....

Let's start with how many days are the furloghs going to last? 4/21 to 9/30 =162 days

Alright $200/162 days.....$1,234,567.90 saved per day.... Doesn't that number look JUST A LITTLE too cute?

The article goes on to say that an average of 1200 to 1500 controllers will be off each day across the system so that daily savings is spread over that number of employees….or and average daily saving per day of $823.05 to $1028.81 per day per employee. or $102.88 to $128.60 per hour (8 hr day)!

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics(http://www.bls.gov/ooh/transportation-and-material-moving/air-traffic-controllers.htm), the median pay for controllers in 2010 was $51.94/hr. Now if we assume that every controller is subject to furlough hours equally, that means that either they’ve gotten some pretty good raises in the last 2 years…..or the $200,000,000 savings is, as is most of the propaganda…I mean information…coming from the administration pure garbage. You decide!

In another story I see this quote:
"Government budget cuts that kicked in last month are forcing the FAA and other agencies to cut their spending. FAA officials have said they have no choice but to furlough all 47,000 agency employees, including nearly 15,000 controllers. Each employee will lose one day of work every other week. The FAA has said that planes will have to take off and land less frequently, so as not to overload the remaining controllers on duty."

So back to my Excel!  47000 employees losing 1 day every other week.....23 weeks....12 furlough days per employee.  12 days x 47000 employees into $200mm = $44.32/hr as the average hourly salary for the 47000 FAA employees.  Don't buy that either.