So long, Flight Service

This is what happens when you farm out a vital service to a third-rate company. The vital service in question is Flight Service, and the third-rate company is the government contractor Lockheed Martin. Back in the 1970's when it was just Lockheed, the company nearly went bankrupt, and had to be bailed out by the government, in the days when bailouts were still unusual (unlike today.) Lockheed was a third-rate company even then. How did a third-rate company grow so large? By milking the federal govenment for lucrative contracts.

Flight Service had been around for decades, until Lockheed Martin got its grubby paws on the system. After bungling the transition from the government and providing terrible service to the pilots (when it provided any service at all) LM closed down two-thirds of the stations. Then it closed most of the remaining ones out here in the west. Oakland Flight Service survived World War II and the 1989 earthquake, but Lockheed Martin was too much for it.

Then, not content with closing stations, LM went on to lay off employees from the remanining stations. I guess they were providing such good service to the pilots that they thought they could safely reduce their staffing levels still further. Of course they laid off the older, ex-FAA people, because they cost more, as well as anyone with any union affiliation, the better to discourage anyone from being pro-union. So LM got rid of the most experienced specialists in order to keep those who work cheap, typical of any third-rate company. At least the kids had student loans to repay, so they kept wouldn't give the bosses any trouble. Ya wohl, mein kommandant!

That reminds me, I just bought the complete Hogan's Heroes on DVD, and that show had to be one of my all-time favorites. Sergeant Schultz, in particular, was my hero, and I emulated him throughout my FAA/LM career. Plane crash? I know NOTHING!!! Operational error? I see NOTHING!! Don't laugh, it got me through twenty years, during which I killed eight planes. Actually my developmental killed the last one while I was training him on Flight Watch, but I still got credit because I was responsible. I even have a Sergeant Schultz T-shirt, which I used to wear to work in the days you could still wear T-shirts to work, before the LM Nazis made up all kinds of crazy new work rules.

Come to think of it, in my final months at Oakland Flight Service, I kind of felt like I was at a prisoner of war camp, but that was mostly due to the manager. He went on a power trip, and started acting like Colonel Klink. Not that he was that stupid, just that he got seriously drunk with power, and thought he was a lot smarter than he really was. And they wonder why I retired.

C'est la vie. Soon Flight Service will only be a fond memory, at least the FAA years. The LM experience was completely forgettable. When I worked for the FAA the only problems we had were the pilots and (some of) the supervisors. At the end with LM, we had no problems with either the pilots or the supervisors, and it was still a miserable place to work. That took talent, LockMart.

Lockheed Martin: The 21st century corporation with 1930's management.