Letters of Appreciation and Changes of Station/Transfer

skyhigh Newcomer

Does anyone know if you get extra points for bidding if you have received a Letter of Appreciation from your region/service area?

towerflower Junior Member Palm Coast, FL

Short answer is no. Long answer is you can find this out on the form 3330-43-1, but you get points for a Presidential Monetary Award, an Outstanding Rating, Superior Accomplishment, Quality Step Increase, Exceptional Rating, Special Achievement Award, On the Spot Cash Award, Certificate of Achievement, Time Off Award Letter of Commendation, and a Suggestion Award. Points vary for the type of award and the max you can earn under this category is 10 points.

The Letter of Appreciation is just to acknowledge that you did something good but it wasn't good enough to get you one of the others--or they didn't feel like doing the paperwork justifying it.

MikeATC Retired FAA, NATCA Member Nashville TN

Tower Flower was right on the money.

I've argued extensively with management before I retired that they needed to give more letters of commendation to our newer controllers when they did something noteworthy so that they could earn points for bidding. Needless to say it fell on death ears.

GolfJuliet F*** Terrorism

I thought it was deaf ears.....anyway what do you do to get these awards?

meatasaurusx Trusted Member Chi-town

kiss some serious ass probably

towerflower Junior Member Palm Coast, FL

3 of them have to do with the individual evaluation process (outstanding, exceptional and quality increase step). If you earned one when the process was done you can still count them. Speaking strictly from my experience the rest fall mostly on being in the wrong place at the right time. I have received 2 letters of commendation and 2 letters of merit from my work during and after Hurricane Andrew. I also received one when all commerical power and generator power was lost in the facility but kept things going--being creative helps. I also got one for working the arrival phase of the Daytona 500 during IFR conditions which helped increase the hourly acceptance rate.

Time off awards fall into being in the wrong place at the right time--I say this because the situations could happen to anyone and it's how the individual handles the situation when it occurs. With these I have received about 16. They range from work on committees, preventing a mid-air, and going above and beyond what is expected.

I received 2 cash awards--one for developing a runway incursion program for the airport I worked at and one for spotting a fire. With the last one I also received a Superior Accomplishment Award. I was about to leave the tower and spotted smoke coming from the terminal. It was a truck on fire under the wing of a fully fueled 737 and they estimated it was within seconds of blowing up. If it had it would have taken at least 2 parked a/c and one of the concourses. I was the one who reported the fire first and got the FD moving on it and then stayed to notify everyone.

I figured it out once and I received an award, whether it was a letter of appreciation or higher every 6 months for my 25 years. Most of them had to do with being in the wrong place at the right time and doing more than what was required in order to achieve a better outcome. Some have to do with being involved in the facility and one was seeing a need for improvement (the runway incursion program) and when neither the FAA or the airport would step up to the plate I did what they suggested and did it myself.

But with all of them it takes a supervisor or manager who is willing to take the time to write up the situation to receive the recognition. Some will only take the time to do a letter of appreciation because that's all they have to do is write a letter but if they want more for the controller then the writing has to show more justification and it goes to the region for approval. With time off awards your sup might want to give you an 8 hour time off award for something you did but the region might knock it down to 4 hours instead. The highest one I have gotten is 24 and that was doing an OJT reference book to aid instructors on how to fill out the form--listing references on SOP and LOAs.

They can be received but in all the ones I have received it took a manager or a supervisor who was willing to acknowledge the work that I did.

towerflower Junior Member Palm Coast, FL

I can assure you I never kissed their butts, in fact management considered me a pain in their butt, but they would acknowledge a job well done regardless of how they felt about the controller.

GolfJuliet F*** Terrorism

Thanks for the explanation! I do have a few questions though. How did you keep things going when you lost all power? And how exactly do you prevent a mid-air? Isn't that kinda what your supposed to do.

towerflower Junior Member Palm Coast, FL

How did you keep things going when you lost all power? In this case I was on lunch break and immediately went back to the tower....walking up many flights of steps......but we became a non-radar tower. The regular telephone still worked but no other lines worked--this was during a time when cell phones were few and far between (showing my age but think the late '80s). I worked out a notification of inbounds and outbounds with MIA (I was at FLL at the time) which kept the traffic moving. Freqs still worked because of battery backup.

How exactly do you prevent a mid-air? Isn't that kinda what you're supposed to do? In this case I was the Mateo controller, which worked the jets off the airport. Tower had a C-172 doing a practice approach that went missed and they kept him on their freq and runway heading climbing to 2000'--normally they would fan them and switch them but they were distracted and forgot the practice and they were still on tower's freq. This a/c would have gone to a different lower sector controller. They launched a Learjet shortly afterward (which would be mine), runway heading and climbing to 5000'. When a jet launches at DAB you can hear them in the tracon and when I heard the jet I knew it was going to get ugly. I noticed the tag of the lower sector's practice appch (which they weren't talking to--still on tower's freq) in the departure corridor for the jet. Mind you when I say I noticed the tag I noticed just the position tag of the scope. Hearing the jet and a tag in the departure corridor sent the red flags up, I quick looked the tag to see what it was and how high. I looked at another scope nearby and noticed they didn't have any traffic and told them I was going to turn an outbound in their space. I was calling the jet even before he checked in and he was there. I stopped his climb, turned him, and called traffic. If I hadn't acted quickly it would have developed into a near miss or worse. This all occured while the a/c were still within the tower's airspace. It wasn't unusual for a practice to go out on runway heading for awhile if they were going to fan a faster one inside of them. So it didn't raise a red flag until I heard the whine of the jet. While they were investigating that one the tower did it again--different person, this time forgetting about a point out going across the departure corridor--spun the transitioning a/c and turned the departure again. At that point I asked for them to get me off position. I figured it was better not to wait for the third strike. Yes, it is our job to prevent a mid-air by not putting them in the situation in the first place but sometimes things happen that are out of your control, ie-someone else's actions. In both situations it was down to a matter of seconds to react to prevent it from getting ugly. Sometimes others make a mistake and it might be you seeing it and fixing it.

GolfJuliet F*** Terrorism

Cool story....I don't remember a time when cell phones and internet weren't around lol