Inside the system burning out air traffic control trainees

0:08When air traffic controllers are on the job, they have to be totally focused. I recently saw that firsthand. I watched controllers training at the Federal Aviation Administration Academy in Oklahoma City. Number four or five, Tango Whiskey, you get air, sir. For hours at a time, air traffic controllers watch these radar screens full of blinking dots. Each dot represents an aircraft full of people. Controllers are sometimes told to imagine their own family members are on board. Number 755 kilo, turn right heading number 150, maintain. They can't miss anything. They actually have to train their eyeballs to constantly move around the screens, watching to make sure nothing goes wrong.

0:53There's a special name for this in the industry. Everyone talks about developing the scan. That's Ryan Higgins, a 34-year-old dad of four. Back between 2019 and 2021, he was in training to become an air traffic controller. At the academy, he would watch how veteran controllers kept track of planes on the radar screen, how they developed their scans. Everyone has their own method. Like a lot of people, it's like clockwise. Okay, I'm going to start up here and go around and make a full 360 and then do it over and over and over and over and over again. And who needs something? What is this plane doing?

1:29Just a lot of, it's just a lot of juggling. You have to be very good at multitasking and just very quick to respond. But in all the time that Ryan was in training, he never got enough practice to get comfortable with his own method. He never actually developed a scan. I was kind of like, probably more of like, just winging it like, okay, have I looked at this guy in a while? No, okay. What about over here? Like, I think I was still perfecting mine. Learning to be an air traffic controller is like learning another language. They have to speak in a very particular way. They don't just look at a screen.

2:14They develop a scan. They don't say 28. They say 2-8. And there's another term that trainees come to know and fear. A term for what happens if they can't hack it and fail training. That's called washing out. Washed out was like the favorite word in a tower. Washed out. They already knew who was going to be washed out from the moment you plugged in. and I was on that radar as washed out. And in my head, I'm not going to be washed out. Like, I worked too hard for this. That's Regina Mendez Scott, another trainee who spent years trying to get certified to be a controller. We're going to hear more later about how Ryan and Regina did in training and why they both say the system failed them.

3:01In fact, on one of Ryan's first days on the job, he made a mistake so bad, he decided to quit. It was definitely like a wake-up call. From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. It's Tuesday, July 29th. I'm Emma Talcoff. I'm a producer for the show, and I'm your host for today. There is a serious shortage of air traffic controllers across the country. That can lead to flight delays, and it can make flying less safe. This is not a secret. The FAA has said for years that they want to train more controllers. They've pushed to get more people to sign up, but a lot of them aren't making it through training.

3:42So the question is, why? Today, transportation reporters Ian Duncan and Lori Aratani are taking us inside the system that's burning out hundreds of air traffic controller trainees every year.

4:01Ian, Lori, thank you both so much for joining us. Thanks for having us. Yeah, of course. I understand there's a shortage of air traffic controllers. How severe is that across the country? Emma, there's been a shortage for decades. Right now, the current estimate is that there are 3 ,000 controllers short of the number they need to be fully staffed. You know, I think a lot of people really started tuning into this issue after the midair collision between American Airlines regional jetliner and Army Blackhawk helicopter. They collided earlier this year. In Washington, D.C., this midair collision just above the Potomac River, and 67 people were killed.

4:43Shortly after this accident, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy pledged to increase the number of controllers. He launched a campaign, which he called supercharging, that air traffic controller workforce. It's not just getting more butts in seats, right, and thinking about how you staff it. it's also making sure you get the best people, the best qualified, so you reduce that washout rate. They are trying to encourage more people to do it. They're talking about, you know, they've raised the starting salaries, right? There are bonuses if you make it through training. You know, at the end of June, Congress passed the big, beautiful bill.

5:21And as part of that, there's about$12.5 billion that's going to go to modernizing the air traffic control system. But in recent weeks, Secretary Duffy has said he's probably going to need more than$30 billion to fix this. So they've got a down payment on this, but if they really want to meet their deadline, they're talking about making upgrades to the system and modernizing the system in three to four years, so before the end of the term. So they're doing a lot of stuff to try and increase the number of controllers they're training. But it's a tall order, you know, and we won't know for years whether these recent efforts have paid off.

5:59Yeah, there is this pretty deep shortage of air traffic controllers. We know that it's potentially a source of safety risks in the system. It causes delays when there aren't enough controllers to manage all the traffic. And so we wanted to understand, like, what does it take to actually take someone off the street and make them become a successful air traffic controller? And I think between us, what we found is that there are a lot of roadblocks and obstacles and problems in this system that are just going to make it really, really difficult to rapidly increase the number of controllers who are available to work every day.

6:35Mm-hmm. Yeah, I want to talk through all those obstacles you just mentioned. Let's start with Lori. You and I recently got to see the first step in this process. That's the academy in Oklahoma City where air traffic controllers do their training. Lori, tell me a little bit about what stood out to you from our visit. Like, what were your impressions of the academy? It was really interesting. I mean, one of the things you think about, you know, when we got there, you know, you go into the academy and it looks just like an ordinary building that you might see, multi-story building you'd see in a college campus.

7:09You walk in, there's a little lounge area, there are vending machines with Cheetos, Fritos, you know, cans of Red Bull. But it's really when you go into some of these classrooms that you really feel like you're entering a different world. You know, when you go to the airport, you see that giant tower above the airfield. So this was designed to basically simulate that environment. There are giant screens, and they look just like it's the same view you would get out of an airport tower, complete with airplanes taking off and landing that students are trying to direct. You hear a lot of clicks and a lot of murmuring, and in some cases you're hearing them speak in a language that you can't make sense of.

7:57Princess Natuli Makilo, runway 28, left to land, number two, traffic, Malibu, short line. As they're trying to direct it, instructors are critiquing, right? They're offering them feedback on how they're doing, what they're doing. You manage the pattern really well. Keep that up. It's only for you as long as I get busier.

8:23I don't know if it felt this way to you, but to me, being at the academy, it felt like this very well-oiled machine. Like, the students were very focused. It was a very serious, studious environment. I'm curious, what have you learned and what senses did you get about the challenges that they're facing at the academy? I think one challenge is finding enough qualified instructors. If you think about it, you know, the best instructors and the instructors who are working here are all retired air traffic controllers. Well, if you've already got a shortage of controllers to begin with, you're probably going to have a shortage of folks who are able to teach new controllers, you know, particularly if they hope to increase the number of students who are moving through the academy.

9:06Yeah, for sure. I think another challenge is that a lot of the folks who come to the academy won't ultimately make it through the training. So this is our local control position. So this is going to be the actual person that is clear. We talked to Chris Wilbanks, Vice President of Mission Support Services at the FAA Academy, about how many students drop out or wash out, as they call it. You know, I'm not shy by sharing it. It's not something that I'm super proud of, but 35 % is our washout rate out here at the Academy. So that's upwards of 500 people, you know. And part of it is just, as people are going through the training, some people just realize this job is not for them.

9:48You realize that, you know, airplanes run 24-7, 365 days a year, and that means you're going to have time away from your family. You may work nights, you may work weekends, you may work holidays. It's also an incredibly stressful job, right? When you think of the responsibility that these people have on their shoulders that, you know, one mistake, right, one mistake, and there are hundreds of people, you know, on a flight, one mistake can be a terrible thing. I think one reaction that people might have to this story and to hearing about the shortage is, okay, but air traffic control is a really rigorous job.

10:29So, like, shouldn't the training also be really rigorous? And maybe it's not a bad thing if people are being weeded out. I think that's a good point. You know, we talked to Chris about that. You know, is it possible that everyone who comes to the academy, you know, is successful and moves on to become an air traffic controller? This job's not for everyone. You know, we should not have 100 % success rate out here because just not everyone can do the job. But I do think that we are losing people that would have had an opportunity to be successful if given that, right? And so that's what we're focused on is how do we increase that success rate, get more people in the field training and being successful at their facility there.

11:14Ian, this is where I want to pick up with you because you've been investigating the next phase of air traffic controller training after the academy. First of all, what does that look like? What happens next for trainees? Yeah, so that's right. The academy is about three to four months. It's kind of an initial burst of training. The candidates that are successful and get through the academy, they get assigned to a facility. So that's either a tower at an airport or a big center where they're using radar to kind of direct the planes in the middle of their flight. And that is where they get the really sort of extensive training to certify as a full-time professional controller.

11:55You and I both talked to a former trainee named Ryan Higgins about his experience at one of those centers. We heard Ryan a little bit earlier in this episode. So in 2019, he graduates the Academy. He's assigned to work in Oakland, California. So he packs up, moves there for the next phase of his training. Ian, what did Ryan tell you about his experiences there? So Ryan was assigned to a big center where the controller's job there is to kind of direct planes, usually at high altitude over quite a wide area of territory. So this isn't like the airport tower that you might see at the airport. These are kind of more anonymous facilities, but they're a key part of the system.

12:39And when he got there, he realized that the training he was walking into was going to be quite different to what he experienced at the academy. Yeah, I was sort of surprised when he described what the environment was like at the center in Oakland. Here's some of what he told me about it. It's very much a, like, hectic environment, I thought. I guess I thought it would be more of a focused, quiet, everyone's locked in environment, almost like a more professional kind of thing, when in reality it was very boisterous and people are cracking jokes and ribbing each other and ordering pizza and taking orders for coffee.

13:26It's just a lot of distractions. What did you make of that, Ian? Did that surprise you? It did, yeah. I mean, you know, you played that sort of tape of the students at the academy in the simulator, and it sort of sounds serious and clicky-clacky, and they're all heads down working. And, you know, what Ryan told me, what other trainees who I spoke to for this and current controllers said is like, it's kind of a wild environment, like these are big personalities, and they're all crammed in into this facility in, you know, sort of tight quarters, high stress. And so that comes out in a lot of that kind of like lively behavior that you hear Ryan describing there.

14:03He also ends up finding himself sitting around with not much to do, a lot more than I think he expected. He has this long wait before he gets into the simulators to start that section of the training. And then just as that's getting going and he's doing quite well, the COVID pandemic starts and the FAA sends him and the of the trainees home for a year. So he's kind of rusty at that point. Yeah, that's what he said. He said like he felt like he his skills had eroded. He's away for about a year. He's getting kind of work packets sent home, but he's not got his hands on anything and that the skills he had been building had sort of faded pretty noticeably to him by the time he came back.

14:43Okay, so it's now 2021. Ryan has been working to become an air traffic controller for years at that point. He gets called back to the air traffic control center after the pandemic. He finally gets to practice on the floor working with real live planes. How did it go? Yeah. So he gets through the simulators and then you're on the floor of the facility, sitting down with a trainer who's a current controller and you're plugging in and you're starting to work and learn the ropes for real for real and it's one of his first days there and he screws something up.

15:22I was pretty nervous and I think I like deleted a plane from our scope on accident. He's trying to send a plane from one area to another and instead he deletes some key information about this plane and it is essentially then untrackable. You can see it still but It was just flying without any kind of information. And they kind of scramble to find this plane and make sure it's on track. You're just scrambling, talking to other controllers in the area, like, do you see this guy? Do you see this guy? You know, in the end, no harm is done, but he says that he was left pretty rattled by that experience.

16:00I feel like my heart rate is elevating just imagining being in that situation, like, first day on the job and you make a big mistake like that. Yeah, and, you know, he gets pulled over by the supervisor who sort of tells him, like, you can't do that sort of thing. And I was already, like, kind of chafing under just thick work culture and the high cost of living in Oakland. And I was like, I don't know if I really want to do this. He goes home, goes on leave, and he never comes back.

16:39hmm ian what did his decision to quit at that point kind of say to you about like the larger issues that you've been investigating in the system yeah i think there's one way that you could look at this and say here's a guy who couldn't hack it and he screwed something up and he quit and maybe that's a good outcome but i think you have to kind of dig a level deeper into his experience and kind of understand his thought process a little bit one of my first days there, there was a guy being trained and he was pretty far along, but the guy training him was just like letting him have it. It was like, what the F are you doing?

17:17What are you effing stupid? It was like that for like 45 minutes and I was like, okay, I get to look forward to that, I guess. And so he's kind of sizing things up. He's thinking, well, this facility is so understaffed, like, what is actually working here going to look like if I complete my training? And so he said, like, I didn't want to come in to work every day and be trying to train and just being berated if I screw something up. And so he says, look, I don't think it was inevitable that I was going to fail here, but I sized everything up. And then I had this one experience that sort of broke the camel's back for me.

17:55And I decided to quit. Is that kind of consistent with what you heard from other trainees? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I'd spoke to a good half a dozen people who went through the system and didn't successfully complete their training. And I'd say almost everyone described some instance of just having a pretty awful interaction with the trainers they were working with. The FAA actually surveyed trainees too a few years ago and found this was a pretty kind of consistent pattern that the culture is just really kind of hostile, can be really hard to break into. Trainers pretty dismissive in a lot of cases of the people that they're supposed to be kind of bringing up to standard.

18:38One of the people I talked to had a really extreme story about just abuse and mistreatment at the hands of her trainers. I walked into air traffic with the biggest smile. I was on cloud nine. Like, you couldn't tell me anything. Like, I got my dream job, my dream career. Like, I'm just the happiest woman on earth right now. And I walked in like, hi, family. Hi, ATC family. And when I say that's literally what I said, I literally walked in and said, hi, ATC family. Unbeknownst to me, it's like, no, you're not our family. That's Regina Mendes Scott. Back in 2008, she dreamed of becoming an air traffic controller.

19:18And she spent 15 years pursuing that dream, only to face a hostile culture that eventually drove her to a breaking point. I started to see the writing on the wall. Like, holy crap. I'm not going to make it through here. I'm not going to make it to ground.

19:38After the break, what happened to Regina? We'll be right back.

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20:26So, Ian, before the break, we were talking about Regina Mendez Scott. She's a former aspiring air traffic controller who you and I both spoke to. She was 30 years old in 2008 when she first graduated from the FAA Academy. Let's talk a little bit about what her experience was like after that. So Regina gets through the Academy and gets initially to JFK Airport in New York. You know, big, complicated airport, difficult environment for trainees, but she feels like she's doing okay. but then she starts working with this controller who from afar was someone that she had really really admired but then when she started to work with him she felt like he was kind of playing favorites and wasn't really very invested in her and i never forget reading a flight plan if you stumbled or or kind of like stuttered or hesitated on reading a flight plan the trainer will snatch me right out snatch me right on out until you go downstairs and hit the books regina would be training, she'd be, you know, in the tower working, and any kind of small mistake, she says she was just pulled out, kind of reprimanded, and sent down to kind of go back and study and made to feel like she wasn't measuring up.

21:42When you're on edge and constantly belittled and taunted and get off position, you don't know, and you're never learning, you're never going to learn. For me, I didn't. I didn't. I had to teach myself the little that I learned. Ultimately, she washes out from JFK, it's not totally unusual for people to have a hard time and fail at their first facility and move somewhere that's a little smaller, a little easier potentially, and go on to certify and have this great career as a controller. But what happens with Regina is quite different. And this is the beginning of an odyssey for her through the FAA system.

22:21Yeah, wow. So what happened next? So she moves to a second airport, still in the New York area, smaller place. The second airport ends up being a really difficult experience. She alleges that she experienced sexual harassment while she was there. And that really just starts to wear her down. I came to work on edge. I came to work nervous every day. I mean, I cried in the parking lot before I entered the facility. I left the building in the parking lot crying because, mind you, there's no crying in air traffic. Gotta have thick skin. Remember that. There's no crying in air traffic. She says she's just trying to focus on her training, get certified.

22:59But it was really hard because of the harassment, the environment that she was in. So eventually she leaves the second airport and is starting over again at a third tower. And, you know, moving airports like this isn't without a cost. When you go to a new facility, you're effectively back at square one and you have to start your training over again. And if you had certifications on particular positions at another airport, you can't bring those with you. You're beginning over. Why do you think she didn't just walk away from this industry and decide to get a new job at some point? I think you heard it at the top when she was describing her real passion for this job, that she really wanted to stick with it.

23:43I just envisioned, you know, that day that I would be in the tower. Like, oh, I'm a controller. I'm controlling traffic. I'm talking to pilots. I'm an important piece to the puzzle. So I just, that day couldn't come sooner where I needed to graduate and actually be in that position. I couldn't come sooner. So, but that's, that's just how I felt. It was just a high. It's a high that you cannot explain. Oh, I just, it was like countdown. When is it my turn? So, yeah. I asked Regina what she was thinking when she walked into that third airport to start her training over again. Even at the third airport, I was still hungry for my position, hungry for it, you know, gone, what I've gone through and, and just, it's just everything.

24:33Like I just like walked through fire. I still just wanted it so badly because it was more than just, you know, career for my family i just felt like i needed to prove that i'm to myself like i i i'm not as bad as they think i'm not terrible why they why are they acting like i don't know anything you know so i was fighting all of that i was fighting a lot of demons i was just fighting that and i'm like i just need to get through this and everything will be okay key context for this experience is that Regina is black and this is a career that is dominated by white men. About two-thirds of people who work in air traffic control are white men.

25:16And so she was facing, I think, some additional barriers that other trainees I spoke to probably didn't experience. And so the end of her story at this third airport is actually kind of laid out in an order by a federal administrative judge who examined what happened to her. She has stuff thrown at her. A trainer is slamming their fist down on the table and getting aggressive. And then just racist verbal abuse of kind of the worst kind that you can imagine. I ignored a lot of the signs because I never experienced that. I never experienced blatant racism ever, ever in my life. You hear it. Sometimes you even hear people verbalize, say certain words, but it's never directed to you.

26:09But when it's directed to you on a blatant level, it hits differently, for lack of words. The trainer called her the N-word and the C-word. All in one sentence. That was like, I'm done. I'm done. I'm fighting for something you're never, ever, ever going to give me. It doesn't matter how great I am. It's awful. Regina is eventually essentially terminated. But instead of just walking away, she decides to fight. And so she appeals to a board that is designed to kind of protect federal civil service employees. And she eventually gets to put her case before. It's an administrative judge who issues an order.