The FAA is now turning to gamers to fill air traffic controller jobs.
The recruitment process started on April 17, and the applicant pool reached its 8,000 cap pretty quickly.
Officials are framing it as a win: “Our campaign to recruit gamers to apply to become air traffic controllers is record-breaking.”
After a recent string of aviation incidents linked to inexperienced controllers, this is the solution?
The FAA must know what they’re doing, right?
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seems to think so: “If you think about what gamers are doing on screens, they’re talking, reacting, and managing a lot at once — that’s very similar to what happens in a control tower.”
It may sound good in theory, but for gamers used to nonstop shoot-’em-up action, directing air traffic might not exactly hold their attention.
So why the outreach?
The FAA is fighting a shortage of 3,500 air traffic controllers, which they say stems from high demand for air travel.
There’s another explanation for the shortage, though.
Between 2011 and 2013, the FAA found itself short roughly 4,000 air traffic controllers after the Obama Administration felt the agency was, in so many words, “too white.”
Racial hiring quotas were rolled out, and thousands of qualified trainees were pushed aside, with many of them now part of a class action lawsuit.
Aviation experts say don’t expect a quick fix. Training takes years, and many won’t make the cut.
It may take time, but at least they’re working on the problem they helped create.
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