The Federal Aviation Administration continues to face an air traffic controller shortage, and it’s hoping that a new demographic of potential applicants can fill the ranks: Video gamers.
That’s right, pilots! Soon the ranks of folks coordinating your safe takeoffs and landings may be filled by famously level-headed players of titles such as Call of Duty, Fortnite, League of Legends, and other games shown briefly on screen in a recruitment video the Department of Transportation published recently. The video features, ominously, a remix version of Heads Will Roll by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as its questionable musical choice.
Yes, we know games don’t actually make people more violent, but let’s be realistic. The types of online games shown being played in the DoT’s super hip, sure-to-reach-the-youths call for recruits definitely attract a group of people known for spewing vitriol.
“You’ve been training for this,” the DoT tells prospective gamers in the video, suggesting the self-imposed high-stress (and admittedly low-stakes) world of online gaming is exactly what the next generation of air traffic controllers needs to succeed.
“It’s not a game … it’s a career,” the Department added, encouraging gamers to apply when the annual hiring window opens Friday, April 17, at midnight Eastern, with the FAA set to stop accepting applications after 8,000 submissions.
Here’s hoping that training comes with a crash course in ditching gamer lingo – one would think few commercial airline pilots would appreciate a “gg, noob” after landing their plane.
Gamers to the rescue
“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said of the hiring push. “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.”
The next generation is definitely needed to fill the ranks of the Federal Aviation Administration’s ATC corps, as there continues to be shortages despite years of hiring pushes from the DoT.
According to a Government Accountability Office report published in December, the FAA has been pushing hard for new applicants for a decade, but is still short thousands of ATCs despite some 200,000 applicants in the last few years.
The GAO blamed much of the continued shortage on the difficult hiring process, which only around two percent of applicants complete. Some of that is down to failed training, people losing interest, or not passing screening, naturally, but the GAO said that the difficulty in making multiple screening appointments and long wait periods is also responsible for a considerable share of applicant attrition.
The Transportation Department claims that it is addressing that in its gamer hiring blitz announcement, noting that it’s shaved more than five months off the ATC hiring process in recent months, helping push it to a record hiring level in the past year, with 2,400 ATCs being onboarded since March 2025.
The FAA said that it’s already nearly 50 percent of the way to its FY26 ATC hiring goal too, with nearly 1,200 new ATCs hired so far this year.
That said, there’s still an inordinately high failure rate among those accepted for training, with a third of candidates never finishing the process. That failure rate is high enough that the DoT’s Office of Inspector General launched an audit of the FAA’s ATC academy.
“The Academy is facing considerable challenges with training, including a shortage of qualified instructors, training capacity limitations, an outdated curriculum, and high training failure rates,” the IG said, citing those concerns amid a serious need for more ATCs as the reason for its investigation.
It’s not clear whether the outdated curriculum refers to teaching new ATCs to use ancient, unsustainable technology amid the FAA’s continuing, and underfunded, modernization push.
When asked about the announcement and the state of ATC hiring more broadly, the FAA told us it was in the midst of “deploying a multi-pronged approach to recruit new controllers, improve training success rates and reduce overall training times.” It’s doing this by linking up with colleges to get university-trained controllers into the system and creating year-round hiring opportunities for pre-qualified individuals.
And then there’s the monetary incentives. Along with boasting of salaries north of $155,000 a year for experienced ATCs, the FAA told us it’s also offering $5,000 rewards for academy graduates and new hires who complete initial training, $10,000 for those willing to take jobs in hard-to-fill locations, and lump sum 20 percent salary bonuses for those who stay on after they’re eligible for retirement.
If that’s not desperation, then what is?
Considering a change of profession? Sorry to the old gamers among us hoping to land a spot in a control tower: the FAA generally requires first-time applicants to be under 31, so no crusty old Gen X or elder Millennial applicants, please. ®