Assume Crash Position: The Air Traffic Controller Shortage

My 16-year-old son Hal got his driver’s license last month and I have two items to report. First, although he insists on driving us everywhere, thankfully no crashes yet. Second, it’s the same routine every time he gets in the car: methodically adjusting the seat, checking the mirrors (also to make sure he looks awesome), then connecting his iPhone to the stereo so every moment behind the wheel is an expression of his superior taste in music. Because he’s 16, I try to meet him where he is. So I ask questions about Kanye (yes he likes Kanye’s music, no he doesn’t like Kanye’s antisemitism) and try to find something I like about the songs on his playlist.

Last week a rare non-hip hop track began to play, which led to this exchange:

Me: This is different. Who is this?

Hal: Pinegrove.

Me: What kind of band name is that? It sounds like a golf course.

After we returned home, I looked up Pinegrove and found it was named for a not-very-rock-and-roll row of pine trees at Kenyon College. Then I learned Pinegrove isn’t exceptional; there are other bands with names that sound like golf courses. Which upsets me because band names used to be dangerous. I’m thinking about The Kinks, Sex Pistols, Guns N’ Roses, Alice in Chains, Public Enemy, Insane Clown Posse, and Rage Against the Machine. Even danger-adjacent names like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and over-the-top names like The Killers. So as a small gesture of protest, here’s a short quiz to see if you can discern which are bands and which are golf courses. Contrary to what you might think, they’re not all golf courses. Answers are at the end.

BAND OR GOLF COURSE QUIZ

Perhaps the least dangerous band – if not band name – is Aussie soft rock duo Air Supply. While in little danger of being misconstrued as a golf course, nearly everything is more dangerous than Air Supply. Like air travel. Since late January, we’ve seen several serious incidents involving commercial aircraft including the Washington DC collision of an American Airlines plane and military helicopter that killed 67 and has been linked to a shortage of air traffic controllers on duty.

Air traffic controllers (ATCs) have a big job: making sure planes don’t hit each other, helicopters, or anything else. So it’s imperative that we have enough. Unfortunately DC’s Reagan National is currently operating at 63% of its target ATC staffing level. That’s not uncommon. Philly is below 60%. The entire New York City region is at 65%. In 2023, only 23 of 313 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) facilities met target ATC staffing levels.

Air traffic controllers are trying to keep up. The union representing nearly 11,000 working controllers reports 41% of members are working six days a week, 10 hours a day. FAA recognizes this isn’t sustainable and has been trying to boost the number of ATCs. But despite boasting that it hit its hiring goal of 1,800 last year, the total number of controllers increased by only 36 – new hires nearly balanced by retiring ATCs. 2025 hasn’t started off particularly well either since the new Trump administration inadvertently emailed all ATCs offering to pay them through September if they resigned now. Perhaps in penance, last Thursday Elon Musk pleaded on X for retired ATCs to consider returning to work. As Air (Traffic Controller) Supply – might have sung, we’re All Out of Air Traffic Controllers, or we need to start Making Air Traffic Controllers Out of Nothing At All.

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Why is it so hard to find enough people for one of the few in-demand jobs that provides an earn-and-learn pathway for career launch, pays six figures, and doesn’t require a degree? One reason is that FAA requires all controllers to retire when they turn 56 and allows them to retire with full pensions at 50. Another is there’s little room for career switchers; like Logan’s Run, you can’t apply if you’re over 30. Then there’s the fact that training was grounded during Covid. But none of these holds an illuminated marshalling wand to the primary cause of the ATC shortage: how FAA manages training and certification.

Becoming a Certified Professional Controller (CPC) takes 3-4 years. And between coursework and numerous assessments – including medical and psychological – about 40% of paid trainees don’t make it. As a frequent flyer, these requirements seem worthwhile. But there are two major bottlenecks, the first being that FAA has also required every new controller in the United States to attend a small school located in Oklahoma City.

The FAA Academy is located on the 133-acre campus of OKC’s Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center. It delivers an introductory 16-week curriculum to controller trainees. As such, it’s been the first stop in the career of every working ATC who didn’t start in the military. At the Academy, newly hired controllers learn terminology, regulations, and radar procedures, train on ATC simulators, spend their stipends on extended stay hotels like the aptly named FAA Crashpads and the Best Western Saddleback Inn (famous for its complimentary hot breakfast), and take hotel shuttle buses back and forth each day, providing fodder for decades of tower conversations. After experiencing Oklahoma’s wind sweepin’ down the plain (of the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center), new controllers may know they belong to the land / and the land they belong to is grand. But the arrangement is archaic; FAA Academy is the only postsecondary institution serving as the sole gateway to an economically essential profession in a nation of 340 million.

No one paid much attention to the Oklahoma City bottleneck, including the FAA’s own Office of Inspector General which inexplicably failed to mention it in a report on the controller shortage. The only (half) step taken by the FAA was to launch the Collegiate Training Initiative program (AT-CTI), which initially allowed graduates from specific college programs to bypass FAA Academy, but since 1997 has merely passed them out of the first five weeks of training. So for a generation, select AT-CTI trainees have been able to limit their Oklahoma City extended stays to a mere eleven weeks.

It was only six months ago that real alternatives began landing safely. Thanks to the new Enhanced AT-CTI program, this is the first year aspiring controllers can bypass the Academy if they complete designated degree programs at approved institutions. The first two schools… (drumroll please): University of Oklahoma and Tulsa Community College. (Kudos to the Oklahoma congressional delegation!) But as program participants need to complete degrees, it will be years before we begin to see ATCs in number from campuses other than the one at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center.

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Why did every air traffic controller for a generation have to pick up and move to Oklahoma City? According to FAA, the Academy ensured ATCs had qualified instructors and access to the right simulators and equipment. So the bottleneck was justified for safety reasons and strongly supported by the Oklahoma congressional delegation in the name of “centralized, standardized, and efficient training.” But I see a few things on my radar. First, FAA Academy teaches the basics – Air Traffic Control 101 – which should have been possible to deliver elsewhere. Second, there were undoubtedly thousands of great ATC candidates who didn’t want to or couldn’t pick up and move to OKC. Third, when over 90% of FAA facilities are struggling with ATC shortages, we haven’t been optimizing for safety. We’ve seen this in-flight movie before: another example of a federal safety imperative resulting in less safety overall.

Perhaps the craziest thing about the Oklahoma City bottleneck was that it couldn’t have been much of a safeguard in the first instance given that training continued for another three years – 90%+ of total training time – before being allowed to work independently. That’s right, after singing Oklahoma OK, developmental controllers were assigned to one of hundreds of airports or FAA radar facilities for years of apprentice-like training – in classrooms and on the job.

If FAA Academy isn’t delivering this continued training, who is? That would be federal contractor SAIC, which is in the midst of a 7-year $653M contract to provide classroom training for developmental controllers at over 300 FAA facilities, mostly by hiring retired ATCs now targeted by eager Elon. SAIC also helps manage FAA Academy, which gives the lie to decades of FAA claims that initial training could only occur in Oklahoma City.

While important, continued classroom training pales in comparison to on-the-job training (OJT) – helping to manage actual air traffic under the supervision of a CPC – which has been the second major brake on new controller production. I spoke with an executive at another FAA contractor who told me that OJT for controllers-in-training “depends solely on the ability of any given facility to devote its staff – including controllers who would otherwise be ‘on position’ controlling traffic – to take part in training.” The predictable result, in his view, is that “consistent on-the-job training is not a given,” which often adds years to certification timelines and increases attrition as life gets in the way. One factor could be that persistent staffing shortages guarantee overtime pay – at 1.5x the hourly rate – for ATCs who are supposed to be providing OJT.

FAA has been on this issue for a few years. In 2019, it tried mandating a minimum number of OJT hours per week and managed to shorten time-to-certification until the initiative was suspended for Covid. Last month FAA doubled down by increasing controller pay for providing OJT and by resetting an expectation of 12-18 OJT hours per week for developmental controllers. But there’s radio silence on how working ATCs are supposed to solve the catch-22 of freeing up time to train with no increase in staffing levels.

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Why did FAA allow the OJT problem to fester nearly as long as the OKC problem? My guess is because it was cheaper in the short-term to pay overtime than operate an effective apprenticeship program, let alone effective apprenticeship programs across 300+ locations. It’s a textbook case for why employers – the federal government included, multi-site organizations in particular – need help running apprenticeships and other earn-and-learn pathways. Apprenticeship is rarely a core competency and often creates conflicts between current operations and training tomorrow’s talent. As in the air, so with apprenticeships: flying solo leads to crashes.

Although FAA now appears to be on the right track (but still would do well to find a service provider for OJT), a structural shortage of ATCs and skies that are less safe are the bill we’re paying for decades of Oklahoma-myopia and apprenticeship aversion. Which should make us all Rage Against the Machine. Because getting on a plane in the United States should be safer than listening to a band, even one with a name that sounds like a golf course.

BAND OR GOLF COURSE QUIZ