Typical day for a Flight Service Specialist

AFSS5602 Junior Member

Flight service facilities operate 24/7 with day,evening, and midnight shifts. At the moment there is no seniority so everyone pretty much works what they want since we have plenty of volunteers for every shift. I work dayshift on a 4 days on 2 days off rotation. This means I work 6am-230pm or 6am to 330pm. A union was voted in recently so no one knows what the future holds for that.

When the dayshifters get to work at 6am we all go into a briefing room where a supervisor comes in to give us all the details on weather, TFR's, new rules/procedures etc... After that we go out to the operations floor to sign in and take a look at the schedule to see what positions we are working and when throughout the day. Then we pick up our name tags and headsets in our mailboxes or lockers and pick a position to sit down at in our AOR (area of responsibility). Once we get our system booted up and everything set up the way we like, we call whoever we are relieving to take the position.

Some days are extremely busy and quite stressful while others are pretty slow. There a lot of factors that determine how busy we are. Days of the week, seasons, weather, position, and time of the day all play roles. Overall we keep pretty busy and have to do a lot of multi-tasking. In any given day you will talk to many different air traffic facilities for clearances, requests, and coordination. I regularly communicate with 4 ARTCC's, 5-6 TRACON's, and 7-8 towers. We communicate mostly with civilian, business, and military aircraft. We do talk to airliners, but not as frequently.

We get two 15 minute breaks and a 30 min lunch throughout our day. Its a very laid back environment and we all have quite a bit of fun throughout the day.

Rosstafari Daaaang. /X

I'm guessing you were there before Lockheed. What was the change like?

noid Curtis E. Carr Jawja

I didn't think they were there when it was still FAA.

If you weren't able to retire, then you got shafted. Some were able to go to air traffic facilities but most had to stay. The ones that could retire have it made. They got their retirement plus 80-90k pay (lockheed has to eat the difference above what the DOL sets, which is one reason they had to lay people off.)

Most of the leftovers had 15+ years in and the FAA wouldn't help them out. This is why Alaska is in high demand because it is still 2152 and will let people reach retirement.

AFSS5602 Junior Member

I wasn't there when it was FAA. I was hired right out of an aviation university.
Basically a lot of the FAA flight service specialists got hit pretty hard with the
A-76 contract in terms of losing their retirement. Lockheed needed flight service specialists so the FAA refused to take them so they had no choice but to go over to Lockheed. They were essentially a captive workforce. Granted that is merely my educated opinion and not the official word of the FAA or Lockheed. However, I think we all know the harsh truth.

Lockheed did get a great Wage determination adjustment however. A lot of specialists had their pay grandfathered in or saw a pay raise. Some people that worked in ultra high locality locations saw a pay decrease. The major hit seems to have come from the loss of government retirement and health benefits.

I didn't know the government and personally I am pretty happy with Lockheed overall. There are some business decisions I would have liked to have seen handled differently, but unfortunately I am just an average Joe. No job or employer is perfect. I just go to work and do my job to the best of my ability so I can pay my bills.

ualflyer Newcomer

Question - Does anyone know when LM will be hiring again? I have been very hopeful for over a year now, and wonder if anyone has the inside scope from HR, or could get the inside scope. I am looking for a great career as an FSS Specialist, and would welcome any additional information. Thanks for the great posts thus far! Thanks

noid Curtis E. Carr Jawja

They have to let the dust settle from laying off so many people. You can probably expect hiring to begin later this year. I can give you the HR contact or I'm sure AFSS5602 can as well through PM. Best of luck.

MTCTIGUY Trusted Member The 'Boro

This was the first year in a while that they haven't been at our school's aerospace career fair. They were the most interesting people to talk to out of the whole bunch.

AFSS5602 Junior Member

At the moment the hiring has stopped and everyone is now waiting till the union negotiations get under way and a contract is ratified. This unfortunately will take quite a while.

otterstrom Trusted Member of NATCA

dont plan on LM hiring any new specialists. they just laid off a few hundred and plan on laying off another 300 by next spring. theyre closing the small sites and having specialists from those sites transfer to one of the hubs to keep them staffed. i give flight service 15 years tops before the internet completely replaces preflight briefers, computers replace the NOTAM submission system, and the inflight and flight watch(enroute weather) positions are moved back into the center weather units where they began. its unfortunate.

AFSS5602 Junior Member

We have seen some dramatic increases in technology in the past few decades. Unfortunately for many industries this has meant lots of job losses. The 1980's were the best as things were going to get "job wise" for this country. The business model back then was expand expand expand. Jobs and money were plentiful and a good middle class lifestyle was accessible to anyone willing to work any job. That all changed when a disease called "corporate anorexia" infected this country.

Businesses said, hey if we are making all this money from our expansion, we could probably make a bit more by scaling back just a bit, maybe get rid of some facilities/jobs. Just like anorexia it got way out of control. This began in the early 1990's and today nearly every business has adopted the philosophy of "throw as many employees off the bridge as we can". However, just because everyone is throwing their employees off a bridge, doesn't make it ethical, ok, or a good idea.

This business philosophy will mean people in the 21st century will need to learn and go back to school for most of their lives in order to keep money flowing to survive. Single careers will become more and more difficult as companies continue to eliminate or outsource jobs.

I don't know the eventual fate of flight service and really no one does. I see two possibilities. The worst case scenario is what the person above listed. All of the job functions will be split off until flight service per say is no more. Option two, and the most ideal would be expanding flight services capabilities and services to adapt to the changes of the 21st century. Things like providing service to people via the internet (blackberry's etc...), and VFR flight following using radar feeds, etc...