The decades-long shortage of air traffic controllers in the U.S. won’t be solved anytime soon, even with a hiring blitz.
The shortage of air traffic controllers has been ongoing for decades. (Photo by Allison Robbert)
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy unveiled a new plan Thursday to “supercharge” the hiring of air traffic controllers by changing “the current 8-step hiring process at the FAA to a 5-step process,” which will shave “more than four months off the old process.”
Currently, it can take nearly four years to become a certified air traffic controller, including spending several months at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, then completing up to three years of on-the-job experience before becoming certified, according to the FAA website.
Duffy announced ATC starting salaries would increase by 30% for candidates who go to the academy, saying the “average certified professional controller makes over $160,000 per year.”
That is only a 17% increase from $136,790, the mean salary for ATCs in May 2023, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but entry-level ATCs make significantly less, particularly in less busy locations.
Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to President Donald Trump, posted on X on Thursday that he’s sending his Starlink satellite internet terminals to the FAA, claiming the current technology poses an “extremely dire” security risk.
A decades-long shortage of air traffic controllers has dogged the Obama, Biden and both Trump administrations, but the FAA reached its hiring goal in 2024. Despite recent high-profile airplane accidents, including the Jan. 29 midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and a U.S. Army helicopter at Reagan National in Washington, D.C., which killed 67, and the Feb. 17 hard landing of a Delta flight that flipped in Toronto, aviation accidents and incidents are down in recent years. There was a 20% drop in civil aviation incidents from 2023 to 2024, according to the FAA’s Accident and Incident Data System (AIDS) database, which has tracked such incidents in the United States since 1978. Statistically, the lifetime odds of dying in a car crash are 1 in 93, according to the National Safety Council. For a commercial flight, the lifetime risk drops to 1 in 9,821.
“There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so,” Musk posted on X on Thursday.
Officials from NATCA, the air traffic controllers union, told Forbes earlier this month they first learned they were exempt from the DOGE buyout from a report on CNN.
FAA ‘Lacks A Plan’ For Air Traffic Control Shortage, Per Government Report (Forbes)