Estimated read time: 6-7 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY -- America’s airports are facing a national shortage of experienced air traffic controllers. While no airport is understaffed, the level of experience has dropped considerably during the past five years. It’s a wave that was created 30 years ago that’s just reaching us now.
In August 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers after they staged a strike against the federal government. This represented roughly two thirds of America’s 16,000 air traffic controllers. From late 1981 to 1987, 11,000 new air traffic controllers were hired to replace them. Move forward 30 years, and this wave of air traffic controllers has reached retirement age. The FAA requires all air traffic controllers to retire the month they turn 56 years old.
According to a report from the Federal Aviation Administration, in the past five years, 6,766 air traffic controllers have retired, resigned or been fired nationwide, and 7,566 have been hired to take their place. Retirements peaked in 2007, and the level of experienced controllers showed a noticeable dip.
Doug Church, director of communications for the National Air Traffic Control Association (NATCA), won’t go so far as to admit that their experience deficit ever reached a point where the public’s safety became an issue, but he did say, “We’re in a better place now than we were three to four years ago.”
This rate of retirement will continue in the coming years with 2,870 air traffic controllers expected to retire during the next five years.
But America’s air traffic controllers continue to retire in large numbers. This rate of retirement will continue in the coming years with 2,870 air traffic controllers expected to retire during the next five years.
According to the FAA’s projections, two more large waves of air traffic controllers will reach the mandatory retirement age of 56 in the years 2018 -2021 and the years 2036 to 2039. Salt Lake City International Airport shows similar percentages, but Salt Lake is slightly behind the national curve. Its large wave of retiring controllers is just beginning, with two controllers retiring in the past year and 10 more due to retire in the next two years.
The same FAA report that forecasts these large waves of coming retirements also recognizes the need for hiring plans designed to phase in new hires in a manner that will lessen the large retiring and hiring spikes and level out the experience level.
On paper, everything looks fine, with the FAA hiring more people than are retiring. But having two years experience is not the same as having 20 years experience.
In recent years, before the wave of retirements, the eight controllers in the tower may have more than 20 years of experience each, but with these highly experienced controllers retiring, that level of experience is diminishing, some shifts quite sharply.
“There are days when the experience level of air traffic controllers is diminished greatly,” said Gary Lemmons, a recently retired air traffic controller of 25 years. “There are crews when the average seniority may be two and a half to three years and you may have three of these controllers who are not yet fully certified in all positions.”
But, Lemmons added, there is always an experienced supervisor in the room with them.
Scott Farrow, local president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, said all of the local controllers are competent and well-trained. “If these people weren’t qualified to be sitting in that chair, they wouldn’t be sitting in that chair.”
In this highly specialized field, and one that directly affects public safety, hiring a new controller isn’t as simple as hanging out a help wanted sign. Hiring a new controller is a long and difficult process for the potential air traffic controller, with many candidates quitting or being fired before they complete the process. According to a 2011 report from the FAA, for every 100 person who begin the program to be an air traffic controller, about 60 become certified controllers.
A potential air traffic controller must first obtain a college degree in basic air traffic controlling. The applicant must then pass an air traffic controllers’ comprehension test administered by the FAA. If the applicant is hired by the FAA, he or she then must complete qualification at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, which is 13-18 weeks long.
According to the report, roughly 7 to 10 percent of students who enter the FAA Academy fail to graduate. For example, the FAA hired 998 new controllers in fiscal year 2010. Of those, 74 failed to graduate from the FAA Academy. It’s a common enough occurrence that it’s written into the FAA’s future hiring projections.
The FAA hired 998 new controllers in fiscal year 2010. Of those, 74 failed to graduate from the FAA Academy.
Those who graduate then go to their facilities, where they get one-on-one and on-the-job training. While they’re sitting in the controller’s seat, an experienced controller is standing behind them, monitoring them and helping them.
Before becoming a certified controller, he or she must complete a skills test. This can take between 18-36 months of on-the-job training. About 20 to 25 percent of facility trainees are let go before they become a certified controller. In fiscal year 2010, 192 of the 998 new hires were terminated before completing their developmental training.
“Training is not a pleasant thing,” Lemmons said. “It‘s stressful and it usually focuses on the things they’re doing wrong.”
A controller in the tower has a lot to keep track of. The tower controllers monitor planes on the ground at the airport, the airplanes in the gates and all aircraft in the air within a five-mile radius of the airport. On a normal day, a controller will be monitoring three planes in the air and two or three on the ground, says Lemmons, but when it gets busy, that number can rise to 8-10 in the air and 10-12 on the ground.
This experience deficit isn’t such a big deal as long a things are running smoothly, but a new controller’s lack of experience can quickly become evident when things start going wrong.
The big test for new controllers is monitoring and controlling airplanes on a stormy, winter day when snow and inversion limits sometimes completely eliminate a pilot’s, and a controller’s, visibility.
Whatever questions a newly trained controller may have will be compounded greatly during wintry weather, Lemmons said. The movement of the planes slows down and as a result airplanes on the ground and in the air can start to pile up. When visibility falls to zero, the pilots can’t see, so the controllers have to see for them. This can be stressful to an unseasoned controller who is doing it for the first time.
Lemmons added that on bad-weather days, experienced controllers are brought in to help the young controllers who are getting their first taste of controlling in bad weather. The experienced controllers will sit or stand behind the new controllers and not override them but act as an extra set of eyes.
