Off Topic Referring to PATCO

Delta5 Rookie

Yep! fair and Balanced by stuck mike once again. Patco might as well give up their web site and move in here. Of course I won't say anything about the Patco union.
I wouldn't want to get banned again!!!!!!!!!

Admin I'm Kind of a Big Deal Houston

Delta5,

We have gone through many lengths to patch relationships that the old StuckMic had with NATCA, PATCO, the FAA, and other organizations. The old StuckMic was a bash fest against PATCO, the FAA, pretty much just about anything. It wasn't viewed upon too highly by these organizations and lacked growth because of it. When I first joined the old StuckMic I was afraid to post for fear of being bashed. I don't want any of our users to feel that way when posting on this site.

We now have participants at the NATCA National level on our website, the FAA Headquarters level, and members of PATCO as well. We don't want to tarnish our relationships with these organizations because of forum posts and threads we let run wild. Not just in defense of tarnishing those relationships, but there is no place for a thread title called "Let's All Flame PATCO" on this site.

If you want to have a discussion, fine....we can even understand if you get a little passionate about the topic, but please respect others in doing so.

PATCO is on this site because like it or not, they are apart of air traffic control and by being on this site more people can become educated on the organization. There have been some irrelevant threads posted by PATCO and they have been removed as well.

I am an active dues paying member of NATCA and the PAC. I feel very strong about NATCA, but I also understand the FAA and PATCO play a role in our profession and encourage their participation.

We value your participation on this site and hope you continue doing so in the future. We are open to suggestions and you can always use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the website to voice your opinion to the site owner.

EFC Junior Member On a Van by the Sea

TO Admin.

I agree with your position of no flames or difamatory posts. But, I can't agree with your position of censorship. It is sad when one's opinion or position is deleted from a thread because you don't share the same view. It is even worse when an organization like PATCO is given the power to delete threads and/or lock it so opinions against their view are not posted.

In order to be fair to everyone, you and your moderators should not censor one's opinion because it is contrary to your own.

Additionally, if PATCOVP is allowed to "SPAM" everyone with their signature, everyone else should have the same right.

Well, I'll step down from my soap box now, but I reserve the right to came back.

Admin I'm Kind of a Big Deal Houston

We will censor something if it is outright negative in nature. "Let's All Flame PATCO" is a negative thread with nothing good to come of it. A thread more appropriate would be Pro's and Con's of PATCO....we wouldn't have a problem with a discussion like that. As for StuckMic's administrators and moderators....we all have widely different views on may topics and sometimes hash it out in our own private forum. We can't even agree all the time. We don't delete other members posts just because we don't agree with them. We value our members above anything and have let moderators go that we have felt did not value our members or belittled our members.

Referring to PATCO deleting or locking threads....they have the capability of locking or deleting threads in the Ask PATCO forum ONLY. They aren't site moderators, they cannot do this anywhere else on the site, only in the Ask PATCO forum. The NATCA officials have the same permissions as does our flight surgeon. There is a disclaimer "Read before Posting" in each of the Ask Forums. Here is the link to the PATCO one. We created the Ask forums as some type of official response from an organization. A reliable source of information, whereas the forums are open discussion and input from anybody. The Ask forums are just for official responses. In a sense, it is their own area of the website. Just like you have your own profile and can delete things on that, they can do that in these forums only. You can use the other areas of the site to voice your opinion about them. The representatives of those forums have the ability to lock and delete threads so they can remove reply's from other users that aren't official representatives of PATCO and have the ability to lock a forum when they have given their answer. This is the same in all the Ask Forums. The administrators of StuckMic have the ability to see ANY post that was ever made on the site, regardless if it was deleted or not. If you think you were treated wrong, please "Contact Us" and we can investigate it and perhaps open your post back up if it was deleted unfairly.

I recently received an email from a member about PATCO locking and deleting threads and spamming the Ask Forum. I took a look at the Ask PATCO forum and noticed PATCO was posting "press release" type information and other things that were not appropriate. Those posts were moved and PATCO was reminded that the Ask PATCO section was for our users to "Ask" questions and for PATCO to answer them. If they wanted to post other types of information, PATCO has an article section to make those type of posts. They also have the other relevant forums that they can post information for open discussion.

I will look at the PATCO posts and if their signature is spammed on them, I will remove it and show them where the signature feature is located.

Thank you for the input.

This thread is waaaay off topic now....possibly will move our discussion.

DCATC Rookie

PATCO, you do realize that SERCO has way more tha just FCT where they make money. where they make money is NOT the FCT program. so its a lie that your syaing there making 326 million when the VALUE of the FCT contract isnt even CLOSE to that.

please get your facts straight before bashing a company..

Also the average traffic count at those airports are 17/hour, and both are only open 12 hours, so you can easily run that with just 3 controllers, 4 hours single, 4 hours double, 4 hours single.....so theres 4 hours in there for coverage for breaks and all.

be glad there are as many FCT towers as there are cause according to traffic counts alot of them dont fit under the specs that originally the FCT program was made for, so if the FAA really wanted to get down and dirty and cut alot of these programs they can justify it.
Hell look at Pendelton back in 2008, 21,938 thats an average of 4/hour...most GA airports have more traffic than that WITHOUT a tower.
I know you have to stand up for employees and all, but take a step back and look at the bigger picture now and then and be hapy theres as many employees there are now compared to what COULD be.

ADMIN it should go both ways, if PATCO can bash a company then people should be able to bash PATCO

PATCOVP Unregistered

DCATC,

PATCO is working to improve conditions for Air Traffic Controllers. PERIOD

Admin I'm Kind of a Big Deal Houston

If you have a specific thread or post you are referring to, please bring it to our attention and we can take a look at it. There are hundreds of posts a day on this forum....sometimes we don't see something until it is brought to our attention.

You can use the "Contact Us" link.

PATCOVP Unregistered

Working together for better conditions. PATCO

DCATC Rookie

There not making 300 million on profits from the FCT contract. the value of the TOTAL contract to all 3 companies total was just over a 120 million, so its not possible for them to make 300 million profit.

Of course reducing controllers also reduced the cost to all companies. BUT if you use 10 times to the -7 you can see that the traffic numbers at that site are fine with just 3 controllers and runs no risk to safety. Now if traffic picks back up then yes bring that 4th back on, BUT you do realize that the ATC manager at facilities in the FTC program ALSO works traffic, so technically you have 4 controllers at that site, which if you look through ALL FTC towers, its pretty much in line with traffic numbers and FTE's

Now WORLDWIDE, yes they did make that but they do alot more than just ATC, ATC is just a small part of that company, my guess is less than 10% total profit of SERCO as compared to MIDWEST, and RVA, which FTC is there main contract.

ADMIN, not a problem, thank you

Admin I'm Kind of a Big Deal Houston

Frank,

There is a big difference between "Let's All FLAME PATCO" and the title of this thread. You requested that the post that were "off topic" in nature concerning the Sacramento thread be moved out of that thread. I agree as I stated in one of my posts and went ahead and moved them. I didn't know what else to title the thread and didn't want to devote too much time to determining what the new thread title would be so I just named it "Off Topic Referring to PATCO." Off Topic does not refer to something being negative.

There is a lot of clarification that has been done in this "off topic" thread about how StuckMic, PATCO, NATCA, FAA interact on this site.

There is also a difference between negative posts and flaming or bashing posts. You can search this site and find negative posts about StuckMic, NATCA, PATCO, the FAA, housing providers, ATC AT-SAT software, Contract Tower companies, specific facilities....just about anything. We aren't going to censor negative posts about something....not even negative posts about StuckMic...these are open forums where our members can discuss anything they would like freely (provided they don't get too out of hand). Some people aren't going to agree with the job PATCO does, just like people don't agree with some things we do on the website or what the FAA does or what NATCA does.

We created PATCO two different areas of the site where you have complete control over what content is there or not. The PATCO Article section and the Ask PATCO section. Ron has been a member of the site since day one and has always interacted well on the website.

We encourage your participation on site and thank you for being a valued member.