Title: Air Traffic Controllers Will Face A Staffing Crisis Every 25 Years
Headings: Why Air Traffic Controllers Face A Staffing Crisis Every 25 Years
Why Air Traffic Controllers Face A Staffing Crisis Every 25 Years
Vivian Giang

Content: NATS Press Office via flickr
Beginning this week — as part of the government's mandatory budget cuts — nearly 15,000 air traffic controllers, along with 47,000 total FAA employees — are required to take one to two furlough days every two weeks until September. This shortage in staff is expected to delay flights in airports across the country. But aside from budget cuts, a shortage of air traffic controllers will be a burden the FAA will face every 25 years. Here's why: On August 3, 1981, 7,000 flights were cancelled when 13,000 air traffic controllers walked out on their jobs to strike against unsuccessful contract negotiations between the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization and the FAA. Two days later, then President Ronald Reagan fired almost all the strikers, prohibited them from ever being rehired by the FAA and created a cycle of staffing shortages. “They operated that system on nothing more than a political agenda and we’re still paying the price now,” Gregory McGuirk, an associate professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and a former air traffic controller, told us. “ What it did was set up a cycle with one signature." The “cycle” – a direct result stemming from Reagan’s dismissal decision – will occur every 25 years when the majority of air traffic controllers reach the mandatory retirement age of 56. The cycle will continue happening because two current FAA hiring requirements are that controllers have to “be no older than age 30” and retire by the age of 56.