DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Hailee Williamson calmly directs a virtual airplane to land on a runway that looks exactly like one at the airport in Oklahoma City where the Federal Aviation Administration trains future air traffic controllers.
But Williamson, 20, is not at the FAA Academy. She's more than 1,000 miles away, at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, standing behind the controls of an elaborate simulator, where four large video screens stand in for the windows of the airport control tower.
"They teach you all the tools here to properly work your aircraft," says Williamson, who is studying to be an air traffic controller. Still, she says, simulations like this can get stressful — especially when they require you to maintain proper separation between many airplanes of varying sizes and speeds.
"It's really trying to figure out how to balance your brain, and figure out exactly how to manage the stress of the situation," she says. "And then when you come out on the other side, you feel a whole heck of a lot more confident."
The U.S. needs all the new air traffic controllers it can get. The FAA is more than 3,000 certified controllers short of full staffing, and personnel at many facilities are working mandatory overtime and six-day weeks.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has promised to "supercharge" the hiring process. But the reality is that training and certifying new controllers can take years, and the agency's academy in Oklahoma City has limited capacity.
"That's where we come in," says Michael McCormick, who worked as an air traffic controller and manager at the FAA for over 30 years and now runs the air traffic management program at Embry-Riddle. It's one of a half-dozen schools around the country that now offers an accelerated training program that mirrors the classes at the FAA Academy.
Until recently, McCormick says, it would typically take one to two years for Embry-Riddle graduates to get hired as controllers because they would have to spend a few months at the FAA Academy first, and then wait for their medical and background checks. But these accelerated programs allow students to start those checks before graduation. And if they pass their exams, they can skip the academy altogether.
"Now we can start that process while they're a student early in their academic career," McCormick says. "That shortens that hiring process from years down to weeks or months."
Students are eager to start the job
The first group of four students graduated from Embry-Riddle's accelerated training program last month, and they are eager to start their FAA careers.
"I'm open to the challenge. I don't mind doing the work, or the overtime," said Kyra Hanson, one of those recent graduates. "As someone just getting out of college, it's like, what else do I have going on? Working six days a week doesn't freak me out."
Hanson says she knew absolutely nothing about air traffic control growing up in Bloomington, Ind., until she took an aptitude test that suggested she would be good at it.
"I was like a lot of people and thought it was the people at the airport with the glow sticks that helped move the plane," she said. "So I looked it up and I was like, oh, this is kind of cool. And it checked a lot of the boxes of what I was interested in. As far as I wanted a job that was creative, problem-solving, not sitting at a desk. I liked the puzzle of everything."
These aspiring controllers don't seem intimidated by the stresses of the job, either.
"When you tell somebody that you're going into air traffic control, the first thing that they tell me is that I'm going to be gray by the time that I'm 30," Williamson says. But Williamson, who is originally from a small town in North Carolina, says she's impressed by how relaxed the controllers seem at FAA facilities she's visited, including the center in Atlanta that manages high-altitude traffic across parts of the Southeast.
"You expect that when you walk in that the stress level is going to be high, they're all going to be like real uptight and real sticklers. And you walk in and these controllers are having conversations and laughing and controlling these airplanes," Williamson says, "Once you get into it and you see the community of people that you have, it's really not as stressful as I think a lot of people make it out to be."
The job can pay very well, particularly for one that doesn't require a college degree. Certified controllers can earn well over $100,000 per year. With overtime, controllers in the most complex airspace routinely make more than twice that amount.
Still, the FAA has struggled to hire enough air traffic controllers, particularly in key locations like the New York area. The shortage has been widely acknowledged within the industry for years. But it didn't attract widespread public attention until earlier this year, when the collision of a passenger and military helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport just outside the nation's capital thrust the staffing challenges into the headlines.
Recent radar and communication outages at Newark Liberty International Airport further underscored the fragile state of the nation's airspace.
The FAA has responded by trying to get more air traffic control students into the pipeline. The agency announced additional financial incentives for graduates and new hires, expanded opportunities for military veterans, and a streamlined hiring process for new applicants.
"It was taking way too long," Secretary Duffy said at a press conference last month. "If you applied to be an air traffic controller, it could take over a year before you got a seat in the academy. And a lot of young people would go find a different career instead of waiting so long for their spot."
Now, Duffy said, "we are supercharging candidates into the academy."
Extensive training takes years to complete
Still, the job is not for everyone.
Roughly a third of applicants wash out before completing their training at the FAA Academy, according to Duffy. Successful candidates have to have the innate ability, coupled with the determination to push through years of training to learn the nuances of each aircraft, each airport and each control facility.
"In your head, you create a mental model of what is actually transpiring on your displays. And with that mental model, you can then look to the future and predict where the aircraft are going to be based upon the current conditions," explains former controller McCormick.
"You will be able to then project this aircraft I need to turn, this aircraft I need to climb, this aircraft I need to descend," he says. "That mental model is what differentiates the aptitude to be an air traffic controller from the rest of us."
The first big hurdle applicants face is an aptitude test known as the Air Traffic Skills Assessment, or ATSA.
"I'm not an anxious person, typically, but that test scared me," says Jack Karins, who is studying air traffic management at Embry-Riddle. The test focuses on spatial reasoning, short-term memory and math. And it is intense, Karins says — partly because of the material itself, and partly because the stakes are so high.
"That's why it stresses you out so much, because it could end your career before it started," he says.
There are only three scores you can get on the ATSA: not referred, qualified and well-qualified. In practice, you need a score of well-qualified in order to get hired.
The FAA does not say much about how the test works. The agency is focused on hiring "the best and brightest air traffic controllers through a merit-based process," the FAA said in a statement. The agency did not respond to NPR's questions about how the test is scored, or what percentage of applicants receive which score, saying only that candidates are selected based on "agency needs and annual hiring goals."
Some applicants are able to get a score of well-qualified on their first try, including Alejandro Jaramillo, who recently graduated from the accelerated training program at Embry-Riddle.
"Intensity and stress is kind of something I'm used to," said Jaramillo, who grew up racing Go Karts and cars.
"I know some people who are like me who were able to get it on the first go," Jaramillo says, though he also knows some air traffic controllers who had to take the test multiple times. "Those are people, some friends who are in the agency now, who were like, 'listen, I had to try five or six times before I got the score that I wanted.'"
Hailee Williamson agrees the test can be frustrating. She's taken it twice, and hasn't gotten a qualifying score yet. But she's not giving up.
"My goal and my dream is to be an air traffic controller. And you can't be an air traffic controller without passing the ATSA," she says. "I'm a competitive person, so I'm going to pass it eventually."
Once applicants pass the ATSA, that's just the beginning. Students have to attend the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City, or one of the colleges offering the accelerated program. That training gives them the basic tools for the job — down to the right tone of voice to use with pilots.
"Controller voice is something that you learn," McCormick says. "That demonstrates that you're calm, that you're in control, and it exudes confidence… If you have any level of uncertainty in your voice as you issue instructions, the pilots will immediately pick up on that, and they may start questioning what your instructions actually are."
For air traffic controllers, training doesn't end when they get hired by the FAA. It continues in control towers and radar facilities across the country. Controllers typically undergo two to three years of on-the-job training before they're fully certified; for the most complex assignments, the training can stretch to five years.
But it's all worth it, McCormick argues, when those years of hard work pay off.
"When I finally certified as a controller, it was an extraordinary relief. And was probably the happiest moment in my career. Because you've made it, and then you can really start contributing."
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