The problems with the nation’s air traffic control system have been spotlighted during the government shutdown, with controllers working without pay for almost a month and a half and hundreds calling in sick, resulting in thousands of flight delays or cancellations.
However, one program that is training new controllers has managed to continue operating after the Federal Aviation Administration found some additional funding.
New controllers are trained at the FAA academy in Oklahoma City, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University professor Mike McCormick said it has managed to keep operating and graduating students during the government shutdown.
“One thing that’s different with this shutdown, that we have not seen in previous government shutdowns, is the FAA has been able to find sufficient funding to keep the air traffic control academy opened during a shutdown, so they’ve been able to train new controllers to enter the pipeline of the air traffic control workforce,” McCormick said.
“In fact, one of my graduates from the program just completed the academy training last week, and she is now on her way to Boston air traffic control center to work. So that makes a difference, because previously, government shutdowns definitely impacted on the control of workforce and the staffing numbers,” he added.
However, the funding is due to run out Nov. 15.
To speed up the hiring of new controllers, the FAA now has agreements with nine universities, including Embry-Riddle at Joint Base Andrews, to help train the next generation of men and women in control towers and other facilities.
But the money for that university program, plus the spending for billions of dollars on planned hardware and software improvements, was not available during the shutdown.
“The area where it may be impacted the most is going to be the programs and projects where you bring in new infrastructure and you update technology. During the government shutdown, those programs stop, and that means it’s a delay, but it also costs additional dollars to start those programs back up,” McCormick said.
McCormick said an estimated 3,000 new controllers are needed because Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said as many as 20 controllers are retiring every day, compared with four a day before the shutdown.
“What’s happening in the air traffic control system is very similar to what happened during the pandemic, and that is when you have stressors in the workplace that gets so difficult, those controllers who have the opportunity and the ability will retire or resign. That leads to greater than normal attrition levels. So, we’re going to have to make up for that attrition in the continued hiring program of the controller workforce,” he said.
Controllers must retire from service once they reach age 56, and it’s a long process to get them fully certified. But some controllers can stay on until age 61 if they obtain a waiver showing they have expectional skills and abilites.
“It takes one to three years for a controller to certify once they get to the air traffic control facility, so we’re not going to see immediate changes to certified controllers,” he said. ”What we’ll see is that one to three years down the road, then we can bridge that gap with a 3,000 shortage across the United States.”
“With the current hiring program and with the support of institutions, like Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, we’ll be able to feed many more controllers than what we’ve seen previously into the controller workforce,” he added.
McCormick said in the history of American aviation and air traffic control history, the events of the past month and a half will go down as some of the most significant ever.
“I would say this is one of the four key events in air traffic control — the first being the air traffic controller strike in 1981 and then we had the pandemic. And we also had Sept. 11, 2001, and now we have this record-setting government shutdown,” he said.