To Fill Air Traffic Controller Shortage, FAA Turns To Gamers (nytimes.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: As the Trump administration seeks to fill a national shortage of air traffic controllers, officials are targeting a new talent pool: gamers. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday is making a recruiting push aimed at avid players of video games, as the agency strives to fill thousands of vacancies that lawmakers have said leave the traveling public less safe. In a new YouTube ad, the agency is using flashy graphics and the promise of six-figure salaries to convince video game enthusiasts to apply their trigger fingers in service of air safety.
In recent years, video gamers have emerged as a target demographic for recruiters at a number of federal agencies, including the military and the Department of Homeland Security. They are welcomed for their hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making in complex environments and ability to remain focused on screens for hours on end. "To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. Focusing recruiting efforts on gamers, he added, "taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller."
[...] The F.A.A. plans to begin prioritizing recruiting gamers over more traditional avenues like college fairs, officials said, pointing out that only 25 percent of controllers have a traditional college degree, while the vast majority appear to have logged hours gaming. During the presidential transition in 2024, incoming Trump administration officials polled about 250 new air traffic academy graduates over six weeks. Only two of those interviewed were not gamers, according to F.A.A. officials [...]. Students who failed out of the training academy were not similarly queried, officials said, though they have plans to conduct more comprehensive exit interviews in the future. Still, the overwhelming presence of gaming habits among graduates tracked with what they were hearing anecdotally from controllers already certified to work in towers and other air traffic facilities, the officials said, many of whom liked to play video games during breaks in their shifts.
In recent years, video gamers have emerged as a target demographic for recruiters at a number of federal agencies, including the military and the Department of Homeland Security. They are welcomed for their hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making in complex environments and ability to remain focused on screens for hours on end. "To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. Focusing recruiting efforts on gamers, he added, "taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller."
[...] The F.A.A. plans to begin prioritizing recruiting gamers over more traditional avenues like college fairs, officials said, pointing out that only 25 percent of controllers have a traditional college degree, while the vast majority appear to have logged hours gaming. During the presidential transition in 2024, incoming Trump administration officials polled about 250 new air traffic academy graduates over six weeks. Only two of those interviewed were not gamers, according to F.A.A. officials [...]. Students who failed out of the training academy were not similarly queried, officials said, though they have plans to conduct more comprehensive exit interviews in the future. Still, the overwhelming presence of gaming habits among graduates tracked with what they were hearing anecdotally from controllers already certified to work in towers and other air traffic facilities, the officials said, many of whom liked to play video games during breaks in their shifts.
Just one problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Gamers know that when you get "killed", you get another life, and another, and another.
wait an can't reload last save after crashing some (Score:2)
wait an can't reload last save after crashing some planes?
six-figure salaries but the hours and shifts kind of suck.
Re: wait an can't reload last save after crashing (Score:2)
This will be fun. Just like gamers flying drones and killing soldiers stuck in mud. Good luck with nightnares once it dawns on you they were actual human beings.
Re:Just one problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are looking at new avenues of finding employees to hire, wouldn't this technically be a DEI thing? Gamers are diverse... (That's all DEI was, is finding new candidate pools...)
Re:Just one problem (Score:5, Insightful)
> But in reality it was about giving preferential treatment to, often to fill quotas for, women and racial minorities.
No, you made that up. When will right wingers stop lying abut this?
Re: (Score:1)
The FAA didn't even stop there. They made a "biographical questionnaire" which had no objectively correct answers, and then handed out the answers they wanted to the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees (NBCFAE) to be passed on to black candidates.
Re: (Score:1)
Oh yeah. For sure! You didn't get in. That's ok. There were better candidates. It will be always be that way.
Speedrun! (Score:1)
She tempted fate to the limit.
Pushing all of us hard through the night.
If the weather so much as shifted.
She scared it off with a knife!
An OLD problem. (Score:2)
Gamers know that when you get "killed", you get another life, and another, and another.
”To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt," Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.
That “one” problem, has existed in society for generations now. We gonna just pretend the reason GenX grew up with good hand eye coordination was because of speed chess, or are we gonna realize kids have grown up with video game consoles since the 80s?
Ask the current ATC veteran how they honed their skills. By age 9.
If we’re looking to address the empathy problem in kids today, video games have taught that about as well as porn teaches morals.
Labor force reduction (Score:4, Interesting)
There are thousands of jobs which are held by soon to retire or past retirement age workers which there are not going to be enough replacement workers regardless of the pay (if it is below $300,000 a year).
What social media and dating apps have done to damage dating, expect social media to do the same (or is doing the same) to jobs in various industries (auto mechanic).
Future entrants into the job will be driven away when enough existing people share online how poor the pay is for the damage to your health and how poorly you are treated on the job.
Expect higher paid physical exertion jobs to be next in line (loading luggage in an airplane making $18 to $24 per hour to get crippled at age 45).
Re: (Score:2)
With this job, you may get life in prison.
Nah (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Nah (Score:2)
Solid plan (Score:1)
No other young demographic enjoys spending hours staring at a screen.
Modernize the environment? (Score:5, Informative)
I mean... you could also try modernizing the environment.
The system as it currently exists is incredibly archaic. Even the stuff that works is aging out.
https://www.aviationtoday.com/... [aviationtoday.com]
"...The FAA has been forced to spend the majority of its roughly $3 billion annual equipment budget simply keeping obsolete systems alive. In some facilities, controllers still rely on technology that uses floppy disks. (Yes, you read that right â" floppy disks.)
Replacement parts for certain components are no longer manufactured, pushing the agency into the surreal position of hunting for spares on secondary markets like eBay. This is not a charming anecdote about bureaucratic inertia. It is a structural failure with cascading consequences for airlines, lessors, manufacturers, and avionics suppliers.
The fragility of the system became impossible to ignore last spring, when technical failures twice knocked out radar serving the airspace around Newark Liberty International Airport.
The outages triggered thousands of delays and cancellations at one of the countryâ(TM)s most critical hubs. While redundancy is built into ATC architecture, there have been repeated incidents where both primary and backup systems failed simultaneously, including at the Philadelphia facility that manages traffic into and out of Newark. Safety was preserved, but operational confidence took another hit."
https://fortune.com/2025/02/01... [fortune.com]
"Some FAA systems are a half-century old, as aging tech suffers from lack of replacement parts and support service... ...The report from the Government Accountability Office found that the FAA has trouble with upkeep on its equipment, which needs modernization, while airspace demand has seen dramatic growth since the introduction of those systems.
Specifically, according to the FAA officials, aging systems have been difficult to maintain due to the unavailability of parts and retirement of technicians with expertise in maintaining the aging systems,â the report said.
It found that 37% of the FAAâ(TM)s 138 air traffic control systems were deemed unsustainable, meaning replacements come sparingly and there is a significant lack of funding available to modernize the technology.
For example, the Airport Surface Detection Equipment Model-X, which debuted in the early 2000s, tracks movement on the runway. But spare parts for this device are âoeextremely limited and may require expensive special engineering.â
Additionally, beacon replacement antennas are no longer available as they are on average two decades old. And 25-year-old landing systems used to help aircraft on its final approach now lack manufacturing support."
https://www.gao.gov/products/g... [gao.gov]
"The Federal Aviation Administration relies on information systems to help air traffic controllers keep the airspace safe and efficient. Last year, FAA determined that 51 of its 138 systems are unsustainable, citing outdated functionality, a lack of spare parts, and more.
Over half of these unsustainable systems are especially concerning, but FAA has been slow to modernize. Some system modernization projects won't be complete for another 10-13 years. FAA also doesn't have plans to modernize other systems in needâ"3 of which are at least 30 years old."
Doing ATC at a major commercial airport stressful... now throw in the random possiblity of an ATC zero (https://ifr-magazine.com/system/atc-zero/) due to a critical subsystem failure. This doesn't even take into account hostile actors or nation-states deliberatly attacking infrastructure or messing with local airspace.
It doesn't help that age limits on recruit
Re:Modernize the environment? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, the entire governmental apparatus of the United States seems to be going "Ideology? Super. Caring about reality? Fuck off."
Giving a shit about the details right now is forest for trees stuff. The electorate has handed over the keys to the child in the backseat, thinking, "Well it can't be that bad, and the adults were telling us stuff we didn't like to hear. Yee haw, cut those programs! Tax us less! Money is magic!"
Re:Modernize the environment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly a lot of times old equipment works better. I'd rather the FAA hire some engineers to get replacement parts made instead of moving the entire thing to "the cloud" or some trash windows boxes.
Re: Modernize the environment? (Score:2)
There are other options besides the cloud and Windows. Though I fear Windows would be the most likely solution.
Re: Modernize the environment? (Score:2)
Ah, the results of âoeif it works, donâ(TM)t touch itâ. No thought at all put into making sure that itâ(TM)s possible to maintain when it finally doesnâ(TM)t work.
Re: (Score:1)
air traffic controllers are required to retire at the age of 56, and the FAA won't hire anyone older than age 31, because they want candidates to have at least a 25-year career path
That is unfortunate. There are a number of adults who would be willing / able / capable of making a successful transition in the middle of their working years to a new career. With a median pay of $145,000 USD, plus benefits, such a switch is fairly appealing.
Reading through the mandatory retirement at age of 56 - they attribute the reasoning due to potential cognitive decline and that being a risk factor in a high-stress, cognitively demanding environment where multiple lives are at risk. While that
Re: (Score:2)
Yes - but its difficult. Its a very large and high reliability life-safety system. It has to work with aircraft that are over half a century old and aircraft operated by other countries.
I agree that it seriously needs an upgrade, but its a very difficult thing to actually implement.
Oh no, GTJ (Score:2)
They'll play Grand Theft Jet.
United Flight 234 ... (Score:2)
Re: United Flight 234 ... (Score:4, Funny)
bad idea (Score:1)
Gamers have no sense of reality having avoided it as best they can.
...you're cleared to land on runway 67 *airhorns* (Score:4, Funny)
Their first option was giving to job to ICE officers; it fell thorugh when they found out most of them fail at the step where you read the callsigns off the screen out loud.
Re: ...you're cleared to land on runway 67 *airhor (Score:3)
ice replaced tsa.
there were times when air travel in the territory formerly known as USA worked fine without it.
but that was decades ago.
atc was always necessary, especially around airports.
Re: (Score:3)
ice replaced tsa.
there were times when air travel in the territory formerly known as USA worked fine without it.
but that was decades ago.
There was a time we needed TSA. But that was decades ago. Then we got armored cockpit doors and passengers willing to tackle terrorists.
The TSA has never foiled even a single terror plot and misses 66-75% of dummy weapons and bombs when tested. The TSA is a jobs program for pieces of shit willing to grab people's genitals before they fly.
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Is this based on a movie quote or something? Especially the bit about the "airhorns"? And yes, I know that there is no runway 67.
But wait. Perhaps that's a limitation of 2D runways. How would we number the runways in higher dimensions?
Oh wait again. In higher dimensions I'm sure they would use radians rather than the silly 360 thing.
Anyway, thanks for the funny.
Prison sentence in 3...2...1... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Your honor, my client was simply attempting something you'd colloquially call a "pro gamer move"
Welcome to Steam Edition (Score:2)
I do not want real life airforceproud95 videos.
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Is it true or not that the FAA was turning away qualified applicants for political reasons, and now has a shortage?
It seems to be very clear that the FAA has not been inducting sufficient trainees to allow for attrition, and has a shortage of graduates, despite plenty of applicants.
It is also public information that the applicant pool looks like a golf club - lots of white males, and there was an open policy of favouring the recruitment of females and blacks, in order to create a "balance".
Th
The last starfighter (Score:2)
Will the last star fighter please step forwardâ¦
I played "Kennedy Approach" on the C64... (Score:2)
For those who also want to qualify: Kennedy Approach [c64-wiki.com].
AI (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Can't this be automated? What's with AI? (Score:3)
I'm not joking. The speed at which controllers have to react, decide and slot in aircraft these days is insane. Then again these aircraft are stuffed to the brim with assistant electronics and sensors. It looks to me as though a huge portion of the work can be handed over to software bots and perhaps even AI. It's just data on a screen after all. And a huge portion of errors happens due to humans mumbling over analog radio and talking over each other. Another huge potential for replacing that with digital deterministic communication and messaging.
The problem might be upgrading all the systems. Difficult, but certainly not impossible. And think of all the safety gains. ... Or am I missing something here?
Re: Can't this be automated? What's with AI? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Software can handle static travel plans, but things are more dynamic than that. Pilots might miss their landing and have to try again. Wind/Weather can mess up a smooth path. People aren't going to maintain perfect routes. Priorities shift based on emergency/medical/security/weather/military/mechanical needs. Etc... Do you want pilots trying to type their requests into a computer system during the most difficult and dangerous part of their job or do you think making a verbal request to a human operato
Gamera? (Score:2)
I read the headline initially as "FAA turns to Gamera" and I thought cool, finally a use for a fire-breathing kaiju turtle!
ATC/Airports needs to come into the 21st century (Score:2)
Privatize ATC. Other countries do it and it works. Government is far too slow to modernize.
Modernize ATC operation. AI in ground systems and aircraft systems helping pilots and controllers. Make it so operation nearly doesn't need humans.
Free education for new air traffic controllers.
Privatize air port security. Get rid of TSA. They have not stopped one terrorist since 9/11 and fail more than 60% of time finding weapons during tests.
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Privatize ATC. Other countries do it and it works. Government is far too slow to modernize.
You say this like banks aren't holding everyone technologically back in finance.
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This will just a result in a race to the bottom on pay, benefits and working conditions due to the profit motive. The result will be lower a lower standard of service due to staffing shortages. This is what seems to happen for the most part when a government organization is privatized.
Some organizations run better when they don't have to generate a profit.
To Quote an ancient Arcade game... (Score:2)
"In real life you don't have another quarter!"
The fact that it was $0.25 a game may be an indicator as to the age of the reference.
Why is this happening? (Score:2)
If you want more ATC staff, then pay more and make the job more attractive with better shifts and more benefits. You don't have the money? Then you cannot afford to have air travel..
You complain "Nobody wants to work!"? Nobody has ever wanted to work. That complaint has been around for hundreds of years. Work is a PITA and the vast majority of humanity would not do it if they didn't have to do it to live. You need to pay people for their work, and if you don't pay enough they are not interested. You get wha
It just fills me with so much confidence... (Score:2)
that Little Jimmy from next door who hasn't left his mother's living room couch in 15 years is now in charge of getting thousands of people safely out of the air. Yeah, it makes me just want to jump on a plane right now and see where I wind up... NOT.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop testing for pot (Score:2)
FAA.. now hiring like iCE (Score:2)
The real issue is the hiring process (Score:3)
Once you apply for an ATC job, you than wait anywhere from 3 months to multiple years before you start training. One of my friends applied and was accepted more than 2.5 years ago, which while significantly longer than usual, isn't unheard of. There's no reason that the process should take multiple months. A large number of accepted applicants simply give up and start another career/school.
Re: (Score:2)
Please God, (Score:2)
Not VATSIM players
I came to talk about the draft (Score:2)
[Alice's restaurant, courtesy of Arlo Guthrie]
"They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street,
where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected,
neglected and selected."
---
Now, if they cant get gamers to sign up -- There's always the specialized draft. Why do you think that there has been so much legislation recently updating the draft laws?
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/09/military-draft-registration-automatic-iran-war.html
Now, it would take an act of congress to start i
Unpaid gamers? Naw. (Score:1)