Trump admin sees record of 8,000 air traffic controller applicants after effort to hire gamers

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in an interview at the Semafor World Economy Summit that the agency’s outreach has been “wildly successful,” noting how gaming skills translate to the demands of air traffic control.

“This has been wildly successful, and if you think just what these gamers are doing on screens, they’re talking and there’s a lot of things going on,” Duffy said. “They’re used to that, and that’s actually what you’re doing in a tower in a facility, and so they’ve become well suited from the games they play to actually have a great life job that pays well and they can support their families.”

Duffy said that as of Friday, more than 8,000 qualified applicants in just 13 hours had applied for air traffic control roles, calling it the “fastest application pace in American history” and saying, “The next generation of air traffic controllers has ARRIVED.”

The FAA has been facing an ongoing shortage of controllers, driven in part by lingering effects from the pandemic and a wave of retirements that occurred amid the government shutdown last November, when federal employees went unpaid for more than a month. At the time, Duffy warned the impact would continue even after the shutdown ended.

The ad campaign announced on April 20 is designed to reach younger candidates by emphasizing the overlap between gaming and air traffic control. The FAA has argued that experienced gamers are likely candidates due to skills such as quick thinking and the ability to manage difficult situations under pressure.

“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt. This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller,” Duffy said in a statement.