The Federal Aviation Administration’s campaign to recruit video game players as air traffic controllers has been running since April. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has traced the idea to a survey the agency ran at its academy in Oklahoma City, where he said all but three trainees in a group of 250 turned out to be gamers. He took that as evidence the group already had skills the job demands, telling reporters they think fast under pressure, track several things happening at once, and read spatial information quickly.
When the FAA opened its annual hiring window on April 17, the reaction was immediate. Roughly 6,000 people applied within the first several hours, and Duffy called the response “wildly successful.” Applications hit 12,000 within 24 hours, which Duffy said on social media was the most in a single day “since the FAA was created 68 YEARS ago.”
Four months later, Duffy is calling the results “historic.” In a post this week, he said the campaign helped the FAA hit 94% of its annual hiring goal, the fastest pace ever, bring on more than 2,000 new controllers, the most in a single year, and build a pipeline of another 2,000-plus candidates reaching the academy faster than any class before them.
Hired isn’t the same as staffed
The FAA’s goal for fiscal 2026 is 2,200 new controllers, so Duffy’s 94% figure lines up with roughly 2,070 hires. But a new hire isn’t a working controller. Turning a trainee into a Certified Professional Controller takes up to two years of academy and on-the-job training, and roughly a third of trainees don’t finish it. The FAA’s own deputy administrator has put the graduation rate at 63% to 65%, with a goal of reaching 75% to 80%.
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A Government Accountability Office report found that the FAA ended fiscal 2025 with about 6% fewer controllers than it had in 2015, even as the volume of flights the system handles grew roughly 10% over the same stretch. Duffy has acknowledged part of the damage himself, telling CNN last fall that shutdown-driven retirements spiked to 15 to 20 controllers a day, roughly four times the typical pace, and left the FAA short by his own estimate of 1,000 to 2,000 controllers.
In May, the FAA also lowered its definition of a fully staffed workforce, cutting its target from the 14,633 controllers it said it needed in 2024 down to 12,563, citing newer staffing models and scheduling tools. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford defended the change as reform, saying, “We can’t continue to operate the same way and expect better results.”
Whatever the real reason, the new target is still roughly 1,800 controllers above where the FAA stands today.
The hiring push had a companion round of cuts
Weeks before Duffy announced it in February 2025, the Department of Government Efficiency arrived at the FAA and fired 352 probationary employees. None were air traffic controllers themselves, and Duffy has said the administration deliberately excluded controllers from the cuts, telling NBC, “We actually have staffed up. We’ve hired more air traffic controllers during this time.” But the cuts hit roles that support controllers directly, including maintenance mechanics, aviation safety assistants, and aeronautical information specialists, the staff who update the safety charts and data controllers rely on after storms, accidents, or airspace changes.
A federal judge ordered 132 of those workers reinstated with back pay the following month. PBS found that the firings and a separate buyout program combined had already pushed out, or put on track to leave, roughly 12% of the agency’s aeronautical information specialists.
Where it hits the hardest
New York TRACON, which manages some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the country, has operated at close to half its certified controller target, forcing the FAA to temporarily reassign controllers from other facilities just to keep it running. Nationally, roughly two-thirds of the FAA’s largest facilities remain below 85% of their staffing targets.
FAA data shows the annual count of overall runway incursions has held roughly flat, even ticking down slightly, since the agency’s 2023 safety intervention. What has risen is the severity of the worst incidents. Category A events, the FAA’s most serious near-collision classification, climbed from two in 2024 to four in 2025, with three more so far this year.
The January 2025 midair collision near Reagan National, which killed 67 people, wasn’t a story about too few controllers on duty. The NTSB’s final report found tower staffing that night was adequate, and that combining two control positions was a discretionary call, not a shortage-driven necessity. The board still faulted the combined position for degrading workload and situational awareness, and noted staffing at the facility has since gotten worse, not better.
A fatal collision between a jet and a fire truck at LaGuardia in March has added more political urgency. However, investigators have said standard staffing was in place there too, and its final report isn’t due for another year or more.
At a Senate hearing in June, an airline trade group’s CEO told lawmakers pilots report hundreds of near misses somewhere in US airspace every day.
