The FAA supercharge push began in February 2025 when DOT boss Sean Duffy toured the Academy in Oklahoma City. Applications opened right after, and the first new hires began classes in spring and summer 2025. The goal is 9,000 more certified controllers.
The math is simple. About 30% wash out at the Academy. Another 20% fail to certify at their first facility. That leaves about 56% who make it to full qualification. To get 9,000 certified controllers, the FAA will need to hire about 16,000 people.
Even with no delays, the first of these new hires will not be certified until mid-2027. Most will not be in place until 2028 to 2031. In the meantime, retirements will keep cutting into the totals, which means the net gain will be smaller than the number in the press release.
The choke point is training capacity. There is only one Academy for the whole country and a limited number of on-the-job trainers at each facility. No matter how many applicants come in, output is capped.
Take New York TRACON N90. The plan is to hire 226 people over three years to fill about 100 openings. With a 44% failure rate, that takes closer to 400 hires. Each one still needs two to three years in the field to certify. Until then, staffing stays thin and delays stay in place.
Short staffing is expensive. Controller overtime has tripled since 2013, reaching about $200 million in 2024. That money could fund more instructors, more training slots, or even new academies.
If the FAA wants this supercharge to work, it needs more than one big school in Oklahoma. Put training centers near the busiest TRACONs like SoCal, NorCal, N90, Miami, and Atlanta so trainees learn in the airspace they will work. Standardize training so pass rates are consistent. Protect instructor time so they can train instead of covering shifts. Over-hire from the start to make up for the 44% you know will wash out.
Hiring two to three years ahead of retirements is not a surge. It is barely keeping up. That 9,000 more line sounds good, but without more training centers, tighter standards, and a real plan to keep people, the boost will stay stuck at taxi speed.
Any chance that wash out rate mysteriously decreases and the net improves? Surely not. Just saying, when the real number doesn’t meet the PR number, heads tend to roll until it does.
Oh yea. Forgot. Yea, when I was at the Academy, pressure was applied to our leaders that some category of students were not succeeding as well as they should. We graded by giving non radar scenarios to complete, six of them. A 70% was required to pass. The six were averaged and that was basically your final Academy grade . To enhance passing, we under pressure, began to let the student drop his/her lowest single grade and then just average the five remaining. So yes, we can give to pressure.
Exactly. Funny how those stubborn wash-out numbers eventually learn to cooperate once management waves the magic PR wand. 🤔
It can be done, although slowly. I was an Academy instructor when the strike happened. We shortly began to get huge numbers of classes and went to double shifts. The screening was difficult and generally to a level that insured more of our graduates did have capability to probably succeed at a higher level facility. But first we needed controllers from the field to instruct. Few available. Then at the facilities, training is only done by certified controllers which then reduces their time on position some. And then, at the busier facilities, progress is slow, and it takes a couple of years usually to go all the way through. But as a trainee completes a position, it can then be used for coverage on that position, which of course prevents it from training on up. Good and bad though. Coverage plus getting time solo to gain proficient for further progress. And I could go on and on. Many facilities out there are not difficult, have plenty of staffing, and controllers who know a good thing when they have it and intend to homestead. They are the ones who could fill the difficult facilities vacancies much more quickly because they have pretty good experience. They are who you need. And the only way you will get them interested is to make the difficult places really attractive with money, money. A homesteader is not going to take that chance without real incentive. I had an excellent controller background when I went up to ORD. And a trip all the way through was still a tough year and a half. Again, a part of that was because I began to get used for coverage as soon as I checked out on my first position. Much to consider.
I was a controller at ARTCC Chicago in the 70’s and 80’s. I never went to the academy in OKC. All of my training was done in the ARTCC facility. As I remember we had a good graduation percentage. I think the OJT training had about the usual washout rate. In those days it took about 5 years to become a journeyman because of the GS pay system. You had to spend so long at each pay grade and you could not go any farther in training than your pay grade allowed. To go from the entry level pay scale of GS7 to journeyman GS14 was 5 years.
What areas did you work in the ’80s?
At least the effort to train more controllers is being made. That’s a whole lot more than can be said of the previous administrations.
That’s true, but it took one of worst aviation tragedies in modern history to make it happen. To not have an extremely aggressive response from the gov’t would be massive elected representative malpractice and for Congress and the White House both, political suicide. Now that we have a confirmed FAA lead – who hopefully serves his entire five year term – it would be nice if he and Duffy could put some focus and resources toward the GA safety market to get ahead of the statistical likelihood that the accident is going to increase given the huge jump in GA flight hours since 2019 driven by Covid and more wealthy individuals.
@tommy. Good start, but retirements, medical losses, burnout, and resignations will eat into it fast. Add airline growth, more recreational flying, and drones, and the system still won’t meet demand.
Thanks for this informative article, Raf. It’s a refreshing change from re-worded press releases. I can’t help wondering whether retention rates are going to continue to drop as we try to cram more and more flights into our nation’s major airports. At some point, it seems to me we can’t ask humans to become ever quicker and more efficient to accommodate air travel demand and perform at that level for decades. Perhaps the factor limiting the number of flights at major airports isn’t the amount of runway space or number of gates, but the number of aircraft a controller can handle over a career without being an absolute super star. Just a thought.
Bob, thanks for jumping in. You nailed it, it’s not just runways or gates, it’s how much a controller can juggle year after year before they’re done. Think “cumulative stress”.
Interesting article. I hope this concern is properly addressed by the parties involved.
Starting pay I’m sure is a factor as well.
Alex, in case you’d be interested. Here are the pay rates as of mid-2025:
• FAA Academy trainee pay: ~$22.61/hr (about $2,000/month salary).
• Per diems: $50/day for meals, housing covered up to $62.40/day.
• Post-Academy (AG band): ~$43k–$47k/year base, higher with locality and overtime.
• Certified controllers (CPC): Average over $160k/year within ~3 years.
Sources: Washington Post, WSJ, Barron’s.