Global Aviation Round-Up from Aircraft Value Intelligence (AVN)
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Editor’s Note: To watch John’s video version of this article, click here.
America’s air traffic controller shortage has become a numbers game, and the FAA is trying a new way to improve the odds: recruit gamers.
The idea itself is not new. The Biden administration began exploring video-game players as a potential source of controller talent, based on the overlap between gaming and some of the skills required in air traffic control, including multitasking, spatial awareness, object tracking and rapid decision-making.
But Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has taken the concept considerably further. Under his leadership, the Department of Transportation and FAA have made gamers and younger applicants a major focus of an accelerated recruiting campaign. The results so far suggest the strategy deserves attention, even if the ultimate payoff remains years away.
The FAA says it has hired more than 2,000 controller candidates this year, reaching about 94% of its fiscal 2026 hiring target. More than 2,000 additional candidates are reportedly in the pipeline. The agency’s formal workforce plan calls for 2,200 new controllers in fiscal 2026, followed by 2,300 in 2027 and 2,400 in 2028.
The numbers are significant because the underlying problem is substantial. A December 2025 Government Accountability Office report found that the FAA’s controller workforce had fallen about 6% over the previous decade, even as the number of flights using the nation’s air traffic control system rose roughly 10%. In fiscal 2024, those flights totaled about 30.8 million. More than 13,000 FAA controllers now manage a system handling more than 80,000 flights a day.
Simply attracting applicants has never been the FAA’s only problem. The agency told the GAO that it received roughly 200,000 applications over several years, yet remained short-staffed.
The GAO has pointed to the lengthy hiring and training process, attrition and other bottlenecks as reasons why a large applicant pool doesn’t automatically translate into a larger operational workforce. One analysis found that only about 2% of applicants ultimately qualify for and complete the full training process.
That puts the current gamer campaign in perspective. More than 2,000 people entering the pipeline is a meaningful accomplishment. It is not, however, the same as adding 2,000 fully certified controllers to the nation’s radar rooms and control towers.
ATC Is No Game
The distinction matters because becoming an air traffic controller is an unusually demanding process. Applicants must meet eligibility requirements, pass testing and screening, complete specialized training and then demonstrate proficiency on the job. Some trainees will not make it through the process. Others will require substantial additional training before they become fully certified.
The FAA itself has recognized that increasing training completion rates is just as important as increasing recruitment. Its 2026-2028 workforce plan specifically calls for improvements in training and completion rates alongside its hiring targets.
That is where the gamer strategy could either prove genuinely useful or turn out to be little more than an effective recruiting campaign.
The basic premise is not difficult to understand. Many games require players to track multiple moving objects, process information quickly, recognize patterns and make decisions while maintaining concentration. Those attributes have obvious parallels to portions of the controller job. The FAA’s campaign is essentially betting that some of those abilities can transfer from a virtual environment to a highly regulated professional one.
There is also a much larger potential recruiting pool. Video games are hardly a niche pastime anymore, particularly among younger Americans. The challenge for the FAA has been reaching people who might never have considered air traffic control as a career.
Duffy has made that outreach far more visible and aggressive than it was previously. The administration’s campaign puts the message in places where younger applicants already spend time and presents controller work in terms that are familiar to them.
Whether it changes the workforce is another question. The FAA still faces a gap between its staffing levels and operational requirements. Its latest workforce plan puts the fiscal 2026 staffing target at 12,563 controllers, based on projected demand, while noting that roughly 11,000 certified professional controllers were deployed as of April.
That gap can’t be closed with advertising alone. The real measure of the gamer initiative will therefore come much later, when today’s applicants have moved through training and into operational facilities. If a meaningful percentage survives that pipeline and becomes certified, the strategy could become a legitimate model for recruiting technical talent into government aviation jobs.
The FAA needs more controllers. It has struggled to turn applicants into trained professionals. Duffy has responded by dramatically expanding the search for candidates, building on an idea that began before his tenure. For now, the fairest assessment is neither that gamers are the answer nor that the idea is a gimmick.
John Persinos is the editor-in-chief of Aircraft Value Intelligence.
