Level Up: April 17th
Historically, the FAA’s approach to recruiting and retaining Air Traffic Controllers has been to say the least, a slightly schizophrenic. On the one hand, the physical and mental requirements are more challenging than most government or military positions. By government standards, the compensation, and particularly the retirement benefits are very good. But the stress is real and this limits the age range from 30 – 55, further limiting the eligibility pool.
To date this system has provided, by far, the highest level of safety of any public transportation system in the world.
On the other hand, the job has been chronically under-staffed since the infamous PATCO firing under President Reagan and technology remains decades behind schedule.
The split personality has been the recognition of the absolute seriousness of the task, contrasted by the reality of constantly trying to perform these tasks on the cheap.
Under President Trump, the new recruiting posture has taken on an increasingly ‘gamer’ tone–certainly borrowed in part from recruiting programs in the military branches of service.
We are skeptical of this approach. Our understanding of the work is that it is not meant to appeal to adrenaline junkies. There are rushes of activity that require calm management of several mission-critical tasks all at once. And then there is the other 90% of the job which is meant to be as routine as possible.
At the risk of being accused of Schadenfreude, our take is that marketing the job to ‘gamers’ works to the benefit of airport communities. As long as Congress and the FAA continue to under-fund key program improvements and mismanage hiring, the more difficult it will be for airports like Sea-Tac to meet their expansion goals.