A new report released on Wednesday highlighted the Federal Aviation Administration’s struggles to address critical staffing shortages among air traffic controllers and called on Congress to help the agency reverse the trend.
The report by a nonprofit that does research for Congress faulted some towers for inefficient practices. But it also pointed to external obstacles, including government shutdowns and the Covid pandemic, that compounded the F.A.A.’s difficulty in keeping control towers staffed overall. The shortages have contributed to near-misses and other accidents that, combined with outmoded and problematic technology, have heightened concerns about the safety of air travel.
“Scanning the horizon, it’s become clear that the U.S. needs to make a few important course corrections to ensure that F.A.A.’s facilities are adequately staffed, helping keep our skies safe for decades to come,” William J. Strickland, the chair of the committee that wrote the 250-page report, said in a statement accompanying its release.
Mr. Strickland is the former head of the Human Resources Research Organization, which provides staffing assessments for companies and the government.
The report from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, a nonprofit authorized by Congress to provide advice to the federal government on matters of science and technology, was ordered by lawmakers as part of legislation authorizing the F.A.A. to embark on new key ventures. Those include accelerating the hiring of air traffic controllers and investments in advancements in aviation infrastructure and advanced technology.
It was published at a moment of heightened scrutiny of aviation safety and the air traffic control system in particular, following a deadly Jan. 29 crash at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Since then, there has been a series of near-misses and outages, including multiple failures at Newark International Airport, where staffing at the facilities monitoring air traffic remains alarmingly low.
The report traces the F.A.A.’s mounting air traffic control problems going back over a decade, citing events that have stymied efforts to hire and train qualified controllers.
Those events included various federal funding crises, such as government shutdowns that forced air traffic controllers to work without pay; the Covid pandemic, which drove down in-person instruction and enrollment at the F.A.A.’s training facility; and a law requiring that controllers be hired from a variety of educational and training backgrounds. It also cited a lack of former controllers willing to act as instructors, calling that the current “principal constraint” on bringing new controllers online.
The report’s authors called out what they saw as the F.A.A.’s troubling overreliance on overtime hours to keep air traffic control towers staffed. They also raised concerns about shifts that exacerbated the potential for controllers to experience fatigue, which can worsen a controller’s ability to respond in situations where seconds can be a deciding factor in making life-or-death calls.
It also noted that the F.A.A. could correct some of its air traffic staffing problems by doing a better job of shifting controllers to facilities experiencing shortfalls. But the authors stressed that “increased incentives” would be required to entice controllers to move to understaffed sectors, many of which are in more congested areas with a higher cost of living, and undergo the retraining necessary for the new facility.
One of the report’s chief recommendations was for Congress to adequately fund both the agency’s ability to hire outright, and those incentives.
Last month, the House passed a bill that would dedicate $12.5 billion to the F.A.A.’s efforts to modernize its air traffic control system and correct the staffing shortage.
In his confirmation hearing last week, Bryan Bedford, President Trump’s pick to lead the F.A.A., testified that while it would take even more money to correct the air traffic control system’s problems, those funds would be enough to get started in a meaningful way. Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, has also called on Congress on multiple occasions to approve that funding.
But the legislation carrying that funding, Mr. Trump’s signature policy bill, has been divisive. Democratic leaders — who support the investment in the F.A.A. — have railed against the proposed cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, education and clean energy.
The measure is currently being considered in the Senate, which is expected to change the bill in key ways, setting up a clash with the House.
Karoun Demirjian is a breaking news reporter for The Times.
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