Against the Wind - National Air Traffic Controllers Association

130
Against the Wind
New NATCA logo (above): Steve Bell’s
move to redesign the union’s visual identity
riled regional reps and members.
Steve and Ray (right): Executive Vice
President Ray Spickler, left, stood by Steve
Bell when the president came under criticism.
Spickler’s loyalty derailed his bid for
re-election in 1991. / NATCA archives
1991
1
Feb.
their regions largely autonomously, board members
now had to adjust to a different power structure.
“We were all new,” says Gary Molen, the Northwest
Mountain regional rep. “We wanted Bell and those
guys to jump.”
They took Bell to task for having little or no say
on everything from hiring new employees to buying
fax machines for each region (the reps couldn’t live
without them after a few months) to retaining an elderly
woman as parliamentarian at a board meeting
(a one-time appearance stemming from Bell’s impatience
with Robert’s Rules of Order).
A history buff, Bell maintained that the most
successful U.S. presidents were those who led decisively.
He defends his style by pointing out he was
elected to get NATCA up and running. The board’s
time was better spent on addressing regional and
national issues rather than focusing on infrastructure.
“If we’d sat there
and argued,” he
says now, “we’d
never have gotten
anything
done.”
Several
board members
gave Bell
more latitude
than others. But
A USAir 737 landing at LAX Airport crashes into a Sky West Metroliner
positioned on the runway awaiting takeoff clearance. The nighttime accident
kills all twelve aboard the commuter plane and twenty-two aboard
when they discovered that NATCA had paid a public
relations firm about $20,000 to revamp the union’s
logo, they all revolted.
The new look, which appeared on promotional
materials for the 1990 convention, consisted solely of
the word “NATCA” in a streamlined typeface. The letter
“A” was positioned above the others, which some
observers referred to as “the excited A.” While a few
controllers considered the original old-fashioned,
most regarded any changes akin to redesigning the
U.S. flag.
The board and members at large believed the
logo was their identity and quickly called for
its reinstatement. A subsequent board also
toyed with updating the logo and failed.
Changing it was “like the third rail of
NATCA politics,” President John Carr
says now. The original logo remains to
this day.
National Executive Board members
were also perturbed when Bell and Spickler
borrowed another $400,000 from MEBA in
the USAir flight. Two weeks later, the FAA amends procedures to prohibit
planes from holding at runway/taxiway intersections at night or when the
intersection is not visible from the tower.