FAA has employed 2,000 air site visitors controllers after Gen Z online game marketing campaign promising $155K payday

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy introduced in an X post this week that the administration has employed greater than 2,000 air site visitors controllers after an April marketing campaign geared toward recruiting video players, assembly 94% of it’s hiring aim, with an extra 2,000 candidates within the pipeline.

The U.S. Transportation Department and Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) push to enlist younger individuals to turn into air site visitors controllers comes because the aviation sector faces a scarcity of the expert workers. A YouTube ad from the Transportation Department in April—set to electrical music and that includes clips from video games like Fortnite—introduced the FAA’s hiring window for air site visitors controllers open later that cash, boasting the function paid a minimum of $155,000 after three years of labor. 

“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Duffy mentioned in a statement on the time. “This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.”

U.S. aviation has confronted a scarcity of air site visitors controllers for a couple of decade, with the variety of air site visitors controllers falling 6% during the last 10 years, whereas the variety of flights counting on air site visitors management methods elevated by 10% in the identical interval, in line with a December 2025 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). 

The scarcity has gained consideration following a collection of lethal aircraft crashes, together with earlier this yr, when an Air Canada jet struck a hearth truck on a runway whereas touchdown at LaGuardia Airport in New York, killing two individuals. Authorities are investigating the incident, together with how air site visitors and floor management personnel had been coordinating. One air site visitors controller over airport communications appeared responsible himself for the crash, following messages to the hearth truck asking it to cease.

“We were dealing with an emergency earlier,” a controller mentioned. “I messed up.”

How will Gen Z replenish air site visitors management roles?

Kivanc Avrenli, professor of observe in finance within the Syracuse University Whitman School of Management who makes a speciality of aviation security, informed Fortune that he sees looking for air site visitors controllers from a expertise pool of online game followers is logical, given the massive cache of candidates it may present. 

Gaming might help cut back response time and enhance multitasking and spatial consciousness, however doesn’t account for the life-or-death nature of precise air site visitors management work, Avrenli famous.

“There is simply no ‘undo’ or ‘reset’ button, and it requires sustained attention for several continuous hours,” he mentioned. “Gaming does not fully replicate these challenges.”

The Transportation Department’s Gen Z hiring push comes amid broader effort for the federal authorities to draw younger individuals to its workforce. The Office of Personnel Management launched the Early Career Talent Network in March for entry-level employees to tackle finance, human assets, engineering, undertaking administration, and procurement roles in authorities.

To make certain, the FAA’s efforts to rent air site visitors controllers was already seeing early outcomes. It barely exceeded its aim of hiring 2,000 new controllers in fiscal 2025, following hiring 1,800 controllers in 2024, which was additionally above its goal. As of April, Transportation Department was looking for $95.4 million to rent 2,300 controllers within the subsequent yr, although the company remains to be 3,500 air site visitors controllers wanting its focused staffing ranges.

Despite 1000’s of candidates for air site visitors management roles, solely about 2% of applicants are profitable in turning into licensed controllers on account of an extended vetting course of requiring between two and 5 years, which means even when recruitment will increase, it may take years for the air site visitors management workforce to replenish itself.

“I do believe recruiting gamers is a reasonable idea,” Avrenli mentioned. “But it is not a quick fix, as training and certifying controllers still take time.”

A model of this story was printed on Fortune.com on April 13, 2026.

More on aviation:

• Air site visitors management isn’t the place for AI, aviation CEO says: We ought to ‘never really give the full reins to a computer’
• This ‘hidden’ profession path is in dire want of extra employees—and it may well pay Gen Z over $300,000 with no diploma required
• The world airline trade’s income could possibly be minimize in half because it braces for its worst yr for the reason that pandemic