Despite a five-year hiring surge, the Federal Aviation Administration is at risk of not having enough senior air traffic controllers for its busiest and most critical facilities, where they are needed to run operations and train less-experienced controllers, according to the agency's independent inspector general.
Nearly one-third of the senior controllers at the nation's most critical facilities are eligible for retirement, according to a report by the FAA's office of inspector general. At a Dallas-Ft. Worth FAA facility, 65% of the controllers are eligible for retirement, it says.
Meanwhile, trainees are quitting jobs at high rates at those same demanding, high-volume facilities, according to the report. Between fiscal year 2008 and fiscal year 2010, critical facilities lost 40% of their trainees to attrition, well above the national average of 24%, the report says.
The problems now are a legacy of the 1981 air traffic controller strike. That year, President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 controllers after they refused to return to work, and the FAA hired thousands of predominantly young controllers to replace them.