The number of meteorologists employed by the government to advise air traffic controllers has fallen to a critical low, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan watchdog agency.
Aviation meteorologists employed by the National Weather Service work directly with the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic controllers at control centers across the country, helping them make informed decisions about the weather that could affect the 45,000 flights moving through American airspace daily.
Just 69 aviation meteorologists were working alongside air traffic controllers as of June, according to the report, published Thursday, down from an average of 81 from 2019 to 2024. That number is further reduced from a 2016 agreement between the F.A.A. and Weather Service that allocated 90 meteorologists to work with air traffic controllers.
Full staffing would mean four meteorologists per control center, according to the report, but as of June, fewer than half had that many. Control centers near some of the country’s busiest air travel hubs, including Boston, Washington, D.C., and Houston had two meteorologists each, and the center near Oakland, Calif., employed just one. Five control centers lacked a meteorologist in charge supervising others.
The aviation meteorologists who remain say they “are suffering from burnout, fatigue and low morale as they are working overtime to maintain operations and are avoiding taking leave,” the report says.
The report warns that the “F.A.A. has not fully identified the risks of having fewer meteorologists,” adding that it has “not developed specific actions that could be taken more immediately to address any such risks.”
Weather Service meteorologists began working with air traffic controllers after Southern Airways Flight 242 crashed on its way to Atlanta in 1977 when it flew into a thunderstorm and lost engine power. Sixty-two people were killed aboard the flight, and nine on the ground.
The air travel system is under pressure from other issues at the F.A.A. Ninety-nine percent of air traffic control facilities in the United States were operating below recommended staffing levels in May, according to a New York Times analysis. And a report by the Government Accountability Office published last year found the F.A.A. was relying on critically outdated technological systems.
Though the Weather Service lost hundreds of employees this year as a result of sweeping cuts made by the Trump administration, the report says F.A.A. officials attributed the low number of aviation meteorologists in the control centers to “natural attrition.”
But Tom Fahy, the legislative director of Weather Service employees’ union, said the F.A.A. was limiting their numbers at control centers.
“The F.A.A. sets the requirements for how many aviation meteorologists we will have,” he said. The agency is required to reimburse the Weather Service for the cost of employing the aviation meteorologists, according to the report.
To solve the staffing problem, aviation meteorologists from other control centers have been helping out at short-staffed centers, the report states, and meteorologists from the Weather Service’s local forecast offices are sometimes assigned to shifts at control centers.
But these mitigation measures pose their own problems, the report says: Backup meteorologists may be unfamiliar with local weather patterns, and meteorologists from local forecast offices may be less practiced in aviation meteorology, which also deals with weather higher in the atmosphere, not just near the earth’s surface.
“This is a critical public safety issue,” Mr. Fahy said.
Nearly 600 of the Weather Service’s approximately 4,000 employees have taken early retirement deals or have been laid off since the beginning of President Trump’s second term as the administration has aggressively hacked at the federal work force. The Weather Service recently received permission to hire hundreds of new employees, though only a handful of job listings have appeared on the government’s online hiring portal.
The watchdog report was published the same day that Mr. Trump signed an executive order aimed at canceling the collective bargaining agreements of the Weather Service union and unions of other government organizations including NASA. The order cited national security, though unions whose agreements Mr. Trump has previously moved to cancel have said the president was retaliating against their challenges to his agenda in court.
The staffing agreement between the Weather Service and F.A.A. is set to expire next month.
In a letter that was included in the report, the Department of Transportation, the F.A.A.’s parent agency, said it concurred with the Government Accountability Office’s recommendation. The letter also said the F.A.A. planned to further reduce the number of aviation meteorologists to 64 next fiscal year, “due to factors including advances in technology that create efficiencies in meteorology.”
Camille Baker is a Times senior news assistant who also contributes reporting to the Data Journalism team.
The post Number of Meteorologists at F.A.A. Is Critically Low, a Federal Watchdog Warns appeared first on New York Times.
