A new report released on Wednesday highlighted the Federal Aviation Administration’s struggles to address critical staffing shortages among air traffic controllers and called on Congress to help the agency reverse the trend.
The report by a nonprofit that does research for Congress faulted some towers for inefficient practices. But it also pointed to external obstacles, including government shutdowns and the Covid pandemic, that compounded the F.A.A.’s difficulty in keeping control towers staffed overall. The shortages have contributed to near-misses and other accidents that, combined with outmoded and problematic technology, have heightened concerns about the safety of air travel.
“Scanning the horizon, it’s become clear that the U.S. needs to make a few important course corrections to ensure that F.A.A.’s facilities are adequately staffed, helping keep our skies safe for decades to come,” William J. Strickland, the chair of the committee that wrote the 250-page report, said in a statement accompanying its release.
Mr. Strickland is the former head of the Human Resources Research Organization, which provides staffing assessments for companies and the government.
The report from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nonprofit authorized by Congress to provide advice to the federal government on matters of science and technology, was ordered by lawmakers as part of legislation authorizing the F.A.A. to embark on new key ventures. Those include accelerating the hiring of air traffic controllers and investments in advancements in aviation infrastructure and advanced technology.
It was published at a moment of heightened scrutiny of aviation safety and the air traffic control system in particular, following a deadly Jan. 29 crash at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Since then, there has been a series of near-misses and outages, including multiple failures at Newark International Airport, where staffing at the facilities monitoring air traffic remains alarmingly low.