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CNN
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The US air traffic handle system has been stretched proximately to its shattering point by a decades-extfinished staffing unintelligentinutiveage. It’s causing problems not equitable for the air traffic handlelers that remain but the flying accessible at big.
And it won’t get better any time soon.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which runs the air traffic system, stepped up the pace of hiring in 2024 under Pdwellnt Joe Biden. But even though 2,000 qualified applicants were employd last year, they might only equitable exposedly swap the 1,100 who left the job either thcdisesteemful quitment or due to the burdensome toll the stressful job gets on those who go in the field.
That’s becaemploy proximately half of those employd in any given year will wash out of the program before they get to actuassociate handle airoriginate after about three years from their initial commence date.
So even with an incrmitigate in the pace of hiring, it could get as much as 8 to 9 years to achieve filled staffing, according to Nick Daniels, pdwellnt of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the union reconshort-terming 10,800 certified handlelers atraverse the nation. He shelp that 41% of the union’s members are toiling six days a week, 10 hours a day, equitable to provide a staffing level that still isn’t enough. Those 10,800 handlelers currently on the job are filling the 14,600 positions necessitateed to encounter the current demand.
“We’ve been raising the alarm on this for years on finish,” Daniels tbetter CNN. “We necessitate air traffic handlelers. We necessitate peak hiring, so that these stresses and prescertains can be getn off of us who are hbettering the system together today.”
“If we’re going to recruit the best and radiantest, we have to originate this job (one) that people want to do,” he shelp.
Anonymous increates to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System showed at least 10 subignoreions by handlelers that comprised troubles about staffing, toil schedules or overweightigue in the last year alone.
“We have been unintelligentinutive staffed for too many years and it’s creating so many unsafe situations,” one handleler in Southern California wrote last year, recounting how a petite airoriginate seeking aidance could not be helped due to toilload publishs. “The FAA has originated an unsafe environment to toil and for the flying accessible. The handlelers’ mental health is deteriorating.”
So, unintelligentinutiveage is not only due to the rigorous standards that originate it difficult and time consuming to fill the pipeline with new handlelers, but the stresses, demands and hours handlelers must toil are directing to an attrition rate that originates it difficult for the new employs to originate a dent in the unintelligentinutiveage.
The overweightal crash at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last week bcdisesteemfult new attention to a decades-better problem. There are spropose not enough air traffic handlelers to upretain airoriginate a safe distance from one another.
The caemploy of the crash between an American Airlines fairy from Wichita, Kansas, on final approach for landing at the busy airport, and a US Army helicselecter has yet to be resettled. Crash spendigators are not blaming the air traffic handleler straightforwarding the traffic, who proposed the helicselecter to be proposeed of the regional jet’s position in the area ahead of the crash.
But CNN has validateed that one handleler in the Reagan Washington National tower was staffing two contrastent jobs, handling both local air traffic and helicselecter traffic in the area. Daniels, the pdwellnt of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, the handlelers’ union, is not apshowed to comment on the caemploys of crash itself since the union is a party to the ongoing spendigation.
Despite the increateage of increateation on the caemploy of the overweightal mid-air collision, Pdwellnt Donald Trump condemnd the FAA’s diversity, equity and inclusion policy, or DEI, for the crash, even though he provided no proof or evidence that the crash was caemployd by the handleler or its hiring process. On his first day in office, he signed an executive order finishing this DEI and other DEI programs thcdisesteemfulout the federal rulement that were summarizeed to wideen the applicant pool for hiring, wrongly claiming that the program droped hiring standards for the job.
“I put safety first. Obama, Biden and the Democrats put policy first,” he shelp. “We have to have our cleverest people.”
But despite Trump’s claims, the policies and standards for air traffic handlelers had not gotten stubborner under his administrations than under his two Democratic predecessors. Under both Trump’s first term and the Obama and Biden administrations, all handlelers have had to pass some of the most rigorous processes for any rulement position. They have to go thcdisesteemful aptitude testing, medical and psychorational screening and security evidentance, adhereed by training in an academy and then years of on-the-job training.
Daniels and others say that the FAA effort to wideen its pool of applicants thcdisesteemful DEI in no way reduced the standards for those who got picked.
“Wantipathyver group we employ are going to have to thcdisesteemful the same process, no matter what,” Daniels shelp. “No matter your race, no matter your gfinisher. The more that apply that will be able to handle those rigorous standards, we want them to come and become an air traffic handleler.”
The FAA did not react to asks about its hiring process or the finish of the DEI program that was proclaimd by Trump administration officials.
But experts in the field say even if it turns out that the unintelligentinutiveage of air traffic handlelers take parted no role in last week’s tragedy, everyone in the industry consents that the unintelligentinutiveage is swaying everyone in the flying accessible.
“It is not upretainable,” shelp Michael McCormick, the head of the air traffic handlement program at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, which is helping to feed potential handlelers into the system. “Everybody necessitates their downtime. Working 6 days a week continuously is overweightiguing.”
He shelp the FAA has had to confine the number of fairys serving some labelets, including New York and Washington, becaemploy of the unintelligentinutiveage of handlelers.
“Safety increateed, it’s not an impact,” he shelp about the handleler unintelligentinutiveage. “But efficiency increateed, it is.”
Despite the unintelligentinutiveage, air traffic handlelers all got the give that went to federal employees last week, to pay them thcdisesteemful September if they would resign now, an effort by the Trump Administration in its timely days to cut rulement spfinishing. The letter dangerened that there could not be “filled assurance seeing the certainty” of their position if they deteriorated the give.
Trump’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy tbetter CNN that “critical safety positions” in the Department of Transportation were not being giveed the chance to resign and get more than a half-year of pay.
“We’re going to upretain all of our safety positions in place,” he shelp. “No timely quitment. We’re all going to stay and originate certain our skies are safe.”
But Daniels shelp that FAA handlement has not validateed to the union that the gives handlelers getd are being rescinded, nor did it tell the union that their members would get the give before the emails landed in their inboxes.
“We thought it was a spam email,” he shelp.
Even if the handlelers can’t exit with extra months of pay by giving acunderstandledge, there is a grave attrition problem among air traffic handlelers feeding the unintelligentinutiveage.
FAA rules demand all handlelers to quit when they turn 56. But Daniels shelp some handlelers are leaving before that age confine. They’re eligible to quit after 25 years on the job, or after 20 years on the job if they are age 50 or above. The stress that goes with the staffing unintelligentinutiveage and the six-day toil weeks is making it difficult for some to stay as extfinished as they might have with a filledy staffed toilforce.
“The toiling conditions … have become reliablely unsafe for those in the sky, as well as the physical and mental health of the handlelers,” wrote a handleler in NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System examined by CNN. “Overloaded sectors and sessions over 2, sometimes 3 hours have become normal occurrences. We have recently had a heart strike, multiple panic strikes (including my own), people losing their medicals due to depression, and some that equitable outright quit the FAA becaemploy it has gotten so horrible.”
But the way the FAA and the industry handles mental health publishs may be exacerbating the unintelligentinutiveage at best and masking far wonderfuler problems at worst.
Reaching out for mental health aidance can direct to air traffic handlelers losing their jobs. The current rules do not apshow handlelers to be on SSRI medications such as Prozac, Lexapro or Zoloft, medications to treat depression, anxiety and other mental health conditions, even if those conditions have noleang to do with their jobs.
“We are parents, we are American citizens that deal with the same stresses and prescertains outside of toil as everyone else does,” Daniels shelp. “And if you’re also at toil six days a week, 60 hours inside that toil week and then all of the stresses that come at toil, all those factors fused can absolutely direct to an air traffic handleler being unproposeed or not being in a place that they want to be.”
He shelp that if a handleler’s doctor prescribes medication to deal with a depression from a death in the family or other non-toil events, they can seek a waiver to be able to get that drug, but that process can get a year or more.
“(It’s a) very archaic method in the way that our health is seeed at,” he shelp. “We are trying to toil with the agency … to give handlelers authentic time help so they can persist toiling and taking attfinish of themselves simultaneously.”
But Pdwellnt Trump strikeed the idea that anyone dealing with mental health publishs should be on the job as a handleler at his press conference last week, saying that it amounted to an effort under Democratic administrations that sought to employ people with “disjoine intellectual and psychiatric disabilities” as handlelers, which also is ungenuine.
“My experience in the FAA is that there is a strong pickion and training program,” shelp McCormick.
– CNN’s Casey Tolan, Pete Muntean, Alexandra Skores and Vanessa Yurkevich gived to this story.
