Everyone is going to make this about money or unions or etc, but my employer briefly worked with some ATC employee groups and I can tell you exactly why they are short staffed:
- The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
- The training and onboarding process is incredibly long, and turnover is high
- The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years
- Most people are just not capable of the amount of stress and risk associated with the job
- Seriously, it's a really freaking stressful job
I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools.
The real need is new and modern technology that automates much of the mistake-prone, human-centric tasks. But nobody wants to risk introducing changes to such a fragile system.
"US ATC System Under Scrutiny" "Fatal crash brings attention to shortage" "There are simply not enough air traffic controllers to keep aircraft a safe distance from one another."
Like, perhaps there is merit in arguing for more controllers or more pay for controllers, and perhaps that would lead to a safer airspace, but the attempts to implicitly tie the fatal crash to ATC in this case seems pretty poor form, here. What we know from the ATC transcripts[1] already tells us that ATC was aware the helicopter & the plane would be near each other well in advance of the crash; ATC informed the helo, the helo responded that he had the aircraft in sight. Time passed, the ATC gets a proximity warning (labelled as "[Conflict Alert Warning]" in VASAviation's video), ATC immediately acts on it, again reaching out to the helo, the helo again confirms they have the aircraft in sight, and moments later we can hear on the ATC transcripts the crash occur as people in the room witness it and react in horror.
To my armchair commenting self, the ATC controllers seem to be exonerated by the transcript, and I'm going to otherwise wait until an NTSB report tells me why I'm wrong to break out the pitch forks on them.
Seems like a colossal error to have asked them all to quit.
I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.
The first problem is that everybody who wants to do the job needs to go through the FAA academy in Oklahoma, which is seriously limited by physical & instructor capacity. So only a couple thousand people a year can work their way through there, no matter how many are willing to do the job.
So first we need more training capacity, and they already have trouble hiring and retaining instructors. This is a more direct place you can throw more money at now.
A start would be moving some of the primary training to the control centers. There's more than one of them, spread around the country, and they already have their own significant training departments.
A significant fraction of people who get into the academy end up not making the cut. Then another good fraction "wash out" during extensive training for the specific airport/center they end up in.
It's a very difficult job and nothing they've tried before is very good at predicting who's going to be successful at it quickly/cheaply.
legitster ·12 days ago
- The FAA has strict hiring requirements. You have to be mentally and physically capable, and by their own admission less than 10% of applicants are qualified for the job. https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
- The training and onboarding process is incredibly long, and turnover is high
- The fundamentals and technology of the job have not changed in decades, despite air traffic exploding in recent years
- Most people are just not capable of the amount of stress and risk associated with the job
- Seriously, it's a really freaking stressful job
I would argue an ATC employee is worth every penny, but I also don't think there is a magical amount of money where you are going to suddenly double your pool of candidates willing to do this kind of work. These people are already very well compensated, and at a certain point you are just going to be cannibalizing other talent pools.
The real need is new and modern technology that automates much of the mistake-prone, human-centric tasks. But nobody wants to risk introducing changes to such a fragile system.
Show replies
deathanatos ·12 days ago
Like, perhaps there is merit in arguing for more controllers or more pay for controllers, and perhaps that would lead to a safer airspace, but the attempts to implicitly tie the fatal crash to ATC in this case seems pretty poor form, here. What we know from the ATC transcripts[1] already tells us that ATC was aware the helicopter & the plane would be near each other well in advance of the crash; ATC informed the helo, the helo responded that he had the aircraft in sight. Time passed, the ATC gets a proximity warning (labelled as "[Conflict Alert Warning]" in VASAviation's video), ATC immediately acts on it, again reaching out to the helo, the helo again confirms they have the aircraft in sight, and moments later we can hear on the ATC transcripts the crash occur as people in the room witness it and react in horror.
To my armchair commenting self, the ATC controllers seem to be exonerated by the transcript, and I'm going to otherwise wait until an NTSB report tells me why I'm wrong to break out the pitch forks on them.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gD_lnBNu0
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tim333 ·12 days ago
>FAA embroiled in lawsuit alleging it turned away 1,000 applicants based on race — that contributed to staffing woes https://nypost.com/2025/01/31/us-news/faa-embroiled-in-lawsu...
The guy behind it is quite interesting. Got 100% on his exams but told they were only hiring 'diverse' folk https://archive.ph/ixmFB
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runako ·12 days ago
I wonder -- if half of the air traffic controllers took the offer to leave their jobs, do we have a Plan B? The deadline they have been given to decide is Thursday; I have not seen any communication as to whether ATC (and TSA, etc.) will be operational Friday.
Show replies
V99 ·12 days ago
So first we need more training capacity, and they already have trouble hiring and retaining instructors. This is a more direct place you can throw more money at now.
A start would be moving some of the primary training to the control centers. There's more than one of them, spread around the country, and they already have their own significant training departments.
A significant fraction of people who get into the academy end up not making the cut. Then another good fraction "wash out" during extensive training for the specific airport/center they end up in.
It's a very difficult job and nothing they've tried before is very good at predicting who's going to be successful at it quickly/cheaply.
Show replies