FAA turns to gamers as it races to close air traffic controller shortfall

The Federal Aviation Administration is expanding efforts to recruit video-game players into its air traffic control workforce, betting that skills honed in gaming, such as multitasking and rapid decision-making, translate to the control room.

The approach originated under the previous administration but has been pushed further under Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has made gamers and younger applicants central to an accelerated hiring campaign.

According to the FAA, more than 2,000 controller candidates have been hired so far this year, putting the agency at roughly 94% of its fiscal 2026 hiring goal. More than 2,000 additional candidates are said to be in the pipeline. The agency's workforce plan targets 2,200 new controllers in fiscal 2026, rising to 2,300 in 2027 and 2,400 in 2028.

The push comes against a backdrop of long-standing staffing strain. A Government Accountability Office report from December 2025 found the controller workforce had shrunk about 6% over the prior decade, even as flights handled by the air traffic system rose roughly 10%, reaching about 30.8 million in fiscal 2024. More than 13,000 controllers currently oversee a system managing over 80,000 flights daily.

The FAA told the GAO it had received around 200,000 applications over several years but still struggled to maintain adequate staffing levels, suggesting that attracting interest has not been the only obstacle to closing the gap.

Whether the gamer-recruitment strategy meaningfully eases the shortage remains uncertain, since training a controller takes years and the reported hiring gains have yet to fully offset the workforce decline identified by the watchdog.