When a midair collision and a series of radar outages captured attention in the United States this year, some air traffic controllers thought it might finally lead to solutions for a nationwide staffing shortage and other longstanding problems at the country's air traffic facilities.
"Everybody's talking about us," said one controller who works at a facility in the Midwest that handles high-altitude traffic. "You have that one moment of like, 'oh, some hope. Hey, they see us out here.'"
But that controller watched with growing dismay as the response from federal officials and union leaders coalesced around an effort to upgrade equipment and ramp up hiring. The plan failed to address some other long-held concerns of many air traffic controllers, such as grueling schedules, stagnating pay and an onerous process for taking paid time off, the controller said.
"The morale just really plummets at that point," said the controller, who asked NPR not to use their name because they're not authorized to speak publicly and are worried about retaliation from the Federal Aviation Administration.
"Not a word of it is about anything that's going to actually help controllers in the not even just short term, but the mid-term," they said. "Honestly, it's more demoralizing than if they weren't talking about us at all."
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has made rebuilding the national air traffic control system a priority in his first few months on the job. He's vowed to "supercharge" the hiring of new controllers, and the Trump administration is also seeking to completely overhaul the technology used in air traffic facilities across the country, including radar and telecommunications equipment.
This month, Congress approved $12.5 billion for that purpose in the budget reconciliation law. Duffy called that funding an important "down payment," though he said it would ultimately take a total of roughly $31 billion to finish the job.
"Our goal is to make air travel not just safer, but also more efficient," Duffy said Wednesday during a hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. "State of the art, gold-plated, best in the world."
Still, many air traffic controllers say problems with the U.S. air traffic system run deeper than outdated equipment. Some have vented their frustrations anonymously on social media platforms like TikTok, and Reddit.
NPR spoke to five current and former air traffic controllers for this story. (Most requested anonymity because they are also worried about retaliation from the FAA.) While several controllers welcomed the additional investment in modernized equipment, they were also skeptical that the Trump administration could achieve its goals as quickly as promised. All of them said the FAA is overlooking critical quality-of-life concerns among controllers.
Meanwhile, they say they're expected to work under stressful conditions each day to keep the complex U.S. air travel system operating, in part by working mandatory overtime and six-day workweeks.
"[Passengers] get to go where they want to go because controllers are showing up to work six days a week. And they're tired, they're exhausted," said the controller who works in the Midwest center. "But they're still showing up and doing an amazing job."
Staffing shortages squeeze controllers
Problems in the nation's air traffic system were well known within the aviation industry. But they burst into public view in January, when an American Airlines regional jet and an U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter collided in midair near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
According to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board, the duties of several air traffic controllers in the local control tower had been combined at the time of the incident, though it's not clear if that played any role in the collision. Still, the accident focused national attention on the controller staffing shortages.
Then the facility that handles traffic around Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey suffered a series of radar and telecommunication outages in April and May, forcing thousands of delays, diversions and cancellations at one of the nation's busiest airports. When some controllers took trauma leave to recover from the impact of those outages, that only exacerbated the staffing shortage.
The roots of the air traffic controller shortage go all the way back to 1981, when then-President Ronald Reagan fired more than 11,000 controllers who had gone on strike to protest what they considered to be unfair wages and long work hours.
That set off a scramble to hire and train thousands of new air traffic controllers. In some areas, the effort succeeded, but facilities that handle some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the world have always been difficult to staff.
Over the past decade, the FAA has struggled to hire enough controllers to keep pace with retirements — hiring only two-thirds of the controllers called for by its own staffing models, according to a recent study by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The problem was made more acute by the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted in-person training at the FAA's academy in Oklahoma.
The FAA currently has fewer than 11,000 certified controllers, more than 3,000 short of its nationwide target. As a result, many are regularly assigned to work a sixth workday. According to the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, over 41% of certified air traffic controllers work "10-hour days, six days a week."
That's in addition to the taxing schedules many controllers already work, including weekend, overnight and rotating shifts. An independent report commissioned by the FAA found last year that a common controller schedule known as the "rattler" can create "known fatigue risks" and should be eliminated.
Staying alert at work is critical for controllers tasked with ensuring planes don't collide and sequencing them for takeoff and landing, said one current air traffic controller at a terminal radar approach control facility (or TRACON) in the central U.S.
"We can't have an off day. We can't have a day where we come in and say, 'oh, I'm just kind of not feeling it today. I'm just going to, you know, kind of cruise through the day.' We don't get that chance," they said. "You walk into work and you have to be 100% mistake-free essentially in your entire career or, you know, people die."
Controllers also report that it can be difficult to take paid time off. They "bid" for leave in the fall for the following year based on seniority, and requests for time off on shorter notice — what's known as "spot leave" — may be denied due to a lack of staffing.
"It became harder and harder to take leave, to plan family vacations, to even get spot leave if you needed time off for your kid's baseball game or soccer game," said one retired air traffic controller.
"It just became more of a shift towards spot leave being denied and feeling like, 'OK, I need this time off because family is important, so I'm going to take sick leave now,'" they said.
The head of the union that represents controllers across the country said he understands how hard they're being pushed.
"We are asking the world of them right now," said Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, in an NPR interview. "Every single person has a right to be frustrated right now. When you are extremely short-staffed, you don't have working equipment."
In a statement, the FAA said it was making it a priority to bolster the air traffic controller ranks by "taking a multi-pronged approach to recruit new controllers, improve training success rates and reduce overall training times."
The FAA is expanding academy training by nearly 30%, shortening the hiring process by five months and partnering with colleges and universities to prepare more students for careers in air traffic control, the agency said.
"Nobody's talking about pay"
Still, some controllers argue they should be paid more to compensate for the grueling working conditions.
"We're missing huge chunks of the prime time of our lives with our families to keep airplanes moving," said the controller who works high-altitude traffic. "We love our job. But, you know, I want to be paid fairly."
Daniels said he has heard that message, too. "I go visit facilities every single week," said the union president. "One of the main topics is pay."
With the Trump administration slashing staffing across the federal government, the union has not pushed publicly for a raise. Still, Daniels said the union is looking to find areas of agreement with the administration, which is why the union has supported the effort to modernize equipment and hire more staff.
"The equipment has to be addressed," Daniels said. "12 and a half billion dollars is a good start to where we need to go."
Daniels said he expects that the administration's push to hire more controllers will yield tangible results, possibly ending the staffing shortage within four to five years. "Those things will start to reduce the stresses and pressures of the mandatory overtime," he said.
But at least one union member said that does little to ease the pressure on controllers right now — even as many in the government and the general public praise them for doing a critical job.
"All you're hearing in the news is staffing [and] equipment, staffing [and] equipment, staffing [and] equipment. Nobody's talking about pay," said the high-altitude controller. "The union should be out here every single day talking about pay."
FAA air traffic controllers have been working under the same contract since 2016. It's been extended twice since then — once in 2021 and again last December — which means their salary ranges haven't been renegotiated in nearly a decade and won't be again for at least four more years.
That's not to say that air traffic controller pay hasn't gone up. Their contract gives controllers a 1.6% "length of service adjustment" each June. They also receive the raises given to most federal employees at the beginning of each year at the discretion of the president and Congress. President Trump has proposed no raise for federal workers next year.
Certified controllers receive a starting salary between $70,876 and $152,426 or higher, based on the facility where they work. According to the FAA, the approximate median annual wage for air traffic control specialists is $127,805.
But a pay raise would help compensate for rising inflation and the added pressures of the job, controllers say, and give a much-needed boost to controllers working at lower-level facilities in high-cost-of-living areas.
When he was running for NATCA president last summer, Daniels said he would work to reset controllers' pay bands "in 2026 when we go to the negotiating table," but as president he extended the contract to 2029.
In an interview, Daniels said circumstances had changed since the Trump administration came to power and began slashing the federal workforce. The union stood to lose more than it would gain from reopening the contract, Daniels said. So it's taking a more cautious approach.
"It has to be very strategic, and it has to be in conjunction with this administration and the direction that they're going to go," he said. "You can't be short-sighted when you're talking about 15,000 peoples' lives. And just screaming pay to scream pay is short-sighted."
The union could also push for other financial benefits besides raises, such as premium pay for working Saturdays and changes to overtime pay, the controller added.
What's next for U.S. air traffic controllers
Controllers who spoke to NPR offered mixed reviews of the steps being taken by the Trump administration to address problems at U.S. air traffic control facilities.
Part of Transportation Secretary Duffy's plan to staff up the workforce includes $5,000 bonuses for recent academy graduates and lump sum payments to encourage controllers eligible for retirement to stay on the job longer.
"There's not one silver bullet to shoot on air traffic control," Duffy told lawmakers on Wednesday. "We have to take all of these multiple steps to move as quickly as possible, to get more young people into the business of air traffic control, and keep more of those experienced controllers on the payroll."
But controllers lament that no similar incentives are being offered to the rest of the air traffic controller workforce, the career employees responsible for the day-to-day task of maintaining order in U.S. skies.
"I am happy for them. I'm glad they're getting it. They deserve every penny of it," the TRACON controller said of academy graduates and those eligible for retirement. "But it should've been for the entire workforce."
On the equipment upgrades, one controller said they were glad the FAA was finally replacing faulty and outdated gear, while another criticized the decision to pay for new technology before wage increases. The retired controller questioned the wisdom of swapping the paper strips controllers use to sequence planes with a digital alternative. "It's a great system. It doesn't need to be fixed," they said. "If it's not broke, why fix it? It's not broke at all."
The FAA said in a statement that the new air traffic control system will "enhance safety in the sky, reduce delays, and unlock the future of air travel" and would also ensure that "hard-working air traffic controllers have a system they can rely on and one they deserve."
For some controllers, though, the long-standing problems at the FAA have pushed them to look for work elsewhere.
Former U.S. air traffic controller Chris Dickinson recently left the FAA after feeling burnt out at the agency. He found a job with Airservices Australia, and he and his family moved to the country in May.
Dickinson said he understands the stresses facing his friends and former colleagues back in the U.S. "I hope it changes for them, because it's a fantastic job, a wonderful, wonderful career," he said. "But it just sucks right now because there's no staffing, morale's crap."
It was after a family vacation to Sydney two years ago that Dickinson began to consider the move. While on the trip, he told several Australian air traffic controllers he met that he had never had weekends off during his career except for a few holidays.
"They were just completely blown away at the fact that anyone could go, like, more than six months without having weekends off, let alone 12 and a half years at that point," Dickinson said. "And it really made me kind of look back and go, 'What is it that I'm willing to accept in my short amount of time on this Earth?'"
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