The FAA’s campaign to lure gamers into the field of air traffic control was so successful that agency officials worried briefly that the overwhelming number of immediate applications would shut the portal down, FAA Deputy Administrator Chris Rocheleau told attendees last week at the NATA Air Charter Forum. As part of its drive to recruit new controllers, the FAA opened an application window for less than a day in late April after marketing to the gaming community.
“Within 24 hours, we had 11,000 people apply to be air traffic controllers,” Rocheleau said. “There was a moment where we were wondering, is the system going to keep up to manage this? Is it going to crash? That outreach turned out to be so positive, and we have more than 8,000 people who have already qualified and are going through that process, a process that last year we truncated by just over five months.”
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