XPost: talk.politics.misc, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.government.employees XPost: sac.politics

The Federal Aviation Administration is taking steps to address its
longstanding air traffic controller shortage. But a new report finds the
FAA’s workforce is unevenly distributed, leading to overstaffing in some facilities, while some remain understaffed.

A report released last week by the National Academies of Sciences found
that 30% of the FAA’s more than 300 air traffic control facilities are overstaffed. About 1,700 employees work in facilities staffed at more than
115% of their workforce targets, “some of whom could transfer and certify
at understaffed major facilities.”

William Strickland, chairman of the committee that wrote the report, and
former president and chief executive officer of the Human Resources
Research Organization, said the results show the FAA workforce “is not
evenly distributed,” and that the agency could do more to incentivize
employees to relocate from overstaffed to understaffed facilities.

“To the extent that we have overstaffed facilities, just hiring numbers
doesn’t get you there. You’ve got to put them where they need to be,” Strickland said. “If FAA had hired every controller [at] the numbers that
they needed, but didn’t put them in the right places, you end up with not enough controllers at a specific facility.”

The report recommends that the FAA use “increased incentives” to convince
more air traffic controllers to relocate from overstaffed to understaffed facilities.

The report also finds that 30% of FAA facilities are understaffed. The remaining 40% of facilities are either slightly above or below their
staffing goals.

The report finds that 19 of the 30 largest air traffic controller
facilities are staffed at less than 85% of what the FAA’s staffing model
says they need. These facilities serve more than a quarter of the
country’s commercial airline operations and account for about 40% of
system delays.

“FAA needs to hire, and they need to hire more than they’ve been hiring,” Strickland said.

FAA’s air traffic controller workforce declined by almost 2,000 employees between 2010 and 2024 — about a 13% reduction.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched a plan last month to
“supercharge” the air traffic controller workforce, but increased hiring
won’t immediately translate into increased staffing.

Strickland said it takes, at minimum, a year and a half to train an air
traffic controller, and up to four years to train them for more complex facilities that see a lot of traffic.

“If you hired every spot you needed to have fully staffed people out
there, most of them today would be in training, and they wouldn’t be ready
to handle a position all by themselves,” he said. “This is not an easy
fix, just hire a bunch of people.”

The report found several bottlenecks in the FAA’s recruiting efforts. The
FAA receives thousands of applications, but about 40% of applicants don’t
take the initial air traffic selection assessment. About a quarter of FAA candidates who make it to the agency’s training academy don’t complete
their training.

Strickland said the “system is functioning in selecting quality people,”
but the report finds the FAA should take steps to ensure more candidates complete their training.

“This hiring system is based on getting enough people, hiring people to
fill seats at the front end of the academy. The focus should be on getting people out of the academy. So maybe you have to put in way more at the
front end, maybe, to get the number out the back. If you just focus on the front end, you don’t get where you need to go,” Strickland said.

The FAA is also seeing an increase in overtime. Since 2013, overtime hours
per employee have more than quadrupled, from 2% to 9%.

“Overtime hours have been keeping up, effectively keeping up with
increased traffic. That’s a good thing, but we’re relying on overtime to
do the work. It isn’t just a scheduling issue. If you’re working six days
a week, 10 hours a day, your life is miserable, but it also is not
conducive to your alertness,” Strickland said.

By law, air traffic controllers cannot work more than five hours
controlling traffic on a shift, and can’t work more than two hours at any
one time without a break.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) said the report “ignores the true issues facing our nation and air traffic controller staffing.” The union states the report is based on FAA’s staffing model
“that has proven to be the root cause of the staffing crisis we now face.”

According to NATCA, the FAA is about 3,800 controllers short of where it
needs to be to adequately staff its air traffic control facilities. As a result, more than 41% of certified professional controllers work 10-hour
days, six days a week.

“The morale of the 10,800 certified controllers that work throughout the National Airspace System (NAS) is at historic lows, not only because they
are required to work long hours, short-staffed, but also because they work
with obsolete equipment and systems in facilities that are crumbling
around them,” NATCA wrote. “Defending this status quo does not make sense
and is contrary to known facts.”

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/workforce/2025/06/faa-air-traffic- controllers-overstaffed-at-30-of-facilities-creating-staffing-shortages- at-other-sites/

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)