The total number of fully certified professional air traffic controllers is the lowest it has been in three decades, but a national air traffic controller organization asserts that landmark legislation being considered by Congress to modernize the nation’s aviation system would help alleviate the hiring crisis.
According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), stabilizing the funding stream for the Federal Aviation Administration will help steady a system that is inadequately supportive of air traffic services, staffing, hiring and training.
The AIRR Act, short for the 21st Century Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization Act, is bipartisan legislation that aims to reform the FAA. It was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in June. The bill would not only reauthorize the FAA for the next six years, but would move air traffic control out of the hands of the federal government and place it into a federally-chartered, not-for-profit corporation. The move would transfer all operational control over air traffic services from the FAA to the new ATC Corporation, as well as transferring all FAA employees, property and facilities.
In September, Congress passed a short-term extension that would fund the FAA for the next six months and avoid a shutdown, while giving the bill sponsor U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) time to rally support for the measure in both houses of Congress.
Paul Rinaldi, president of the NATCA, said the lack of a stable, predictable funding stream has made the problems worse.
“While our controllers do an outstanding job of ensuring our National Airspace System remains the safest in the world, the FAA struggles to adequately staff many of its largest, high-volume facilities,” Rinaldi said in emailed remarks to Transportation Today. “There is no margin to handle additional staffing declines without causing delays and affecting system efficiency.”
While there are more than 3,517 air traffic controllers in various stages of the training process, only 1,240 of those are working to become fully trained and certified at the facility they are working at. Compare that to the 2,410 controllers eligible to retire, and it’s clear the pipeline of new controllers cannot keep up with demand.
Although the FAA exceeded its hiring goal in 2017, hiring 1,890 controllers instead of the planned 1,781, it was only the second year in which it was able to do so, after failing to meet its hiring goals in each of the previous five fiscal years.
“Controller staffing has been a major concern for years,” said Rinaldi, who heads an organization that represents nearly 20,000 air traffic controllers, engineers and other aviation-safety professionals. “It reached a crisis level in 2015.”
“Unfortunately,” he adds, “there is no quick fix to this problem, because it takes years to train a controller once they are hired. Without a stable, predictable funding stream, the problems caused by the staffing crisis are likely to get worse before they get better.”
Recently released data show that the number of fully certified professional controllers totals 10,554 – the lowest it has been since 1989. That figure, according to the NATCA, has dropped 10 percent since 2011 and continues to decline.
Currently, the total number of certified professional controllers is 2,300 short of the FAA’s overall operational target of 12,896.
In 2016, Congress passed legislation that removed some of the bureaucratic red tape involved in the FAA’s hiring process. Reforming the system to support air traffic services, staffing, hiring and training is the next step, the organization said.
Doug Church, spokesman for the NATCA, said providing a stable, predictable funding stream, as outlined by the AIRR Act, would do that.
But, the organization cautioned, it will take years of sustained hiring and successful training to fully end the staffing crisis.