You've got to be some combination of ignorant, desperate, indifferent, or truly gung-ho about becoming an air traffic controller (ATC) to want to become one right now.
ATCs have been understaffed for 1-3 decades, which means the FAA has required mandatory overtime. I hope gamers like working at least one 6-day, 60-hour work week each month, because that's what the policy has been up until recently. And ofc that contributes to unsafe work environments due to ATC exhaustion.
Also, passing or even qualifying to take the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA) -- the ATC aptitute qualification test -- is extremely difficult. In 2024, almost 13k people applied to take the ATSA; fewer than 9k applicants were approved to take the ATSA, fewer than 5.5k people actually took it, fewer than 2.2k scored 85+% ("well-qualified") on the ATSA, and only 1,811 applicants -- ~13% of the original 13k -- were ultimately hired.
And if you're not a white male, that's likely to hurt your chances, too. Women have comprised only 16-18% of ATCs consistently since the 1980s; 64% of ATCs are white.
There's a bunch of other problems, too, but I'm too lazy to go searching for articles that call them out. Suffice it to say that I don't believe the FAA -- especially under the current administration -- has the capacity to objectively improve ATC hiring & employment practices, and will likely only make things worse.
50 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47727575
You've got to be some combination of ignorant, desperate, indifferent, or truly gung-ho about becoming an air traffic controller (ATC) to want to become one right now.
ATCs have been understaffed for 1-3 decades, which means the FAA has required mandatory overtime. I hope gamers like working at least one 6-day, 60-hour work week each month, because that's what the policy has been up until recently. And ofc that contributes to unsafe work environments due to ATC exhaustion.
https://natca.org/2024/04/19/natca-calls-on-faa-to-collabora...
Also, passing or even qualifying to take the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA) -- the ATC aptitute qualification test -- is extremely difficult. In 2024, almost 13k people applied to take the ATSA; fewer than 9k applicants were approved to take the ATSA, fewer than 5.5k people actually took it, fewer than 2.2k scored 85+% ("well-qualified") on the ATSA, and only 1,811 applicants -- ~13% of the original 13k -- were ultimately hired.
https://www.globalair.com/articles/the-faas-real-atc-problem...
And if you're not a white male, that's likely to hurt your chances, too. Women have comprised only 16-18% of ATCs consistently since the 1980s; 64% of ATCs are white.
https://www.everythingpolicy.org/policy-briefs/diversity-and...
There's a bunch of other problems, too, but I'm too lazy to go searching for articles that call them out. Suffice it to say that I don't believe the FAA -- especially under the current administration -- has the capacity to objectively improve ATC hiring & employment practices, and will likely only make things worse.