Now the FAA says players are the reply to its air visitors controller scarcity

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has struggled for years to have sufficient air visitors controllers to deal with shortages, with the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) saying in January that the variety of individuals within the job within the US has declined by round 6 p.c “in the last decade.” Now the Trump administration is rolling out a recruiting marketing campaign focusing on players forward of the opening of the annual air visitors management hiring window on April seventeenth.

Even with the marketing campaign, getting certified people by way of coaching and into the function should be a problem: according to the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG), the FAA is going through “considerable challenges with training, including a shortage of qualified instructors, training capacity limitations, an outdated curriculum, and high training failure rates.”

An FAA video full of clips of issues like Madden NFL, Fortnite, League of Legends esports, and the Xbox One stinger from commercials guarantees a mean wage of $155,000 per yr after three years and says that “you’ve been training for this.”

In a press release, the FAA says that air visitors controllers mentioned in exit interviews that gaming was an affect on “their ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.” The FAA’s website about the application process encourages candidates to “level up” their profession. However, the Trump administration isn’t the primary to focus on players for the function; in accordance to The New York Times, the Biden administration launched a “Level Up” recruiting push in 2021, encouraging players in addition to ladies and members of minority teams to turn into air visitors controllers.

Getting extra air visitors controllers has been a spotlight for Sean Duffy, President Trump’s secretary of transportation, and he introduced a plan to “supercharge” hiring shortly after he was sworn in for the job final yr. That marketing campaign closed in March 2025 and “attracted more than 10,000 applications,” leading to about 600 trainees getting into the Controller Training Academy, the OIG says. And the GAO says that some attrition through the air visitors controller hiring course of “may be preventable,” noting that the hiring course of might be “difficult to navigate” and that candidates might have already accepted different jobs by the point they get an employment supply.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), the union representing air visitors controllers, “welcomes innovative approaches to expanding the candidate pool,” together with “outreach to individuals with high-level aptitude skills such as gamers,” in accordance with a press release from NATCA president Nick Daniels.