AILSA CHANG, HOST:
We begin this hour with the country's air traffic control system. The Trump administration is vowing to rebuild that system in response to recent outages and long-standing staffing shortages. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy testified today on Capitol Hill, where he thanked Congress for recently approving $12.5 billion for air traffic control.
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SEAN DUFFY: Our goal is to make air travel not just safer but also more efficient, state of the art, gold-plated, best in the world.
CHANG: But nearly all of that money is slated to replace aging equipment and infrastructure, and some U.S. air traffic controllers say the problems at the country's air traffic facilities run way deeper than that, including a staffing shortage that leads to long hours and fatigue. For more, I'm joined now by NPR's Joe Hernandez and Joel Rose, who've both been reporting on all of this. Hey to both of you.
JOE HERNANDEZ, BYLINE: Hey there.
JOEL ROSE, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: Hey. OK, so Joe, let's start with you. Who did you talk to for this story?
HERNANDEZ: Right, so we spoke to five current and former U.S. air traffic controllers who either currently work for the Federal Aviation Administration or used to. Four of them requested anonymity to speak with us because they're worried about retaliation from the FAA. So you won't be hearing their voices. But we wanted to get a sense from controllers themselves about what it's like to be doing these jobs right now.
CHANG: Totally. OK, so what were the concerns of these air traffic controllers?
HERNANDEZ: Well, morale is just very low at this point. And the union has acknowledged this, too. And that's because of the staffing shortages at the FAA. Many controllers end up working mandatory overtime that includes six-day work weeks. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, which is their union, says over 40% of certified controllers are working 10-hour days, six days a week. Many also work weekends and overnight shifts. And on top of that, they say it can be hard to take time off because of these staffing shortages. They have to request time off sometimes a year in advance.
CHANG: What? A year. Sometimes you don't even know that far ahead if you want time off.
HERNANDEZ: Exactly. They don't know that far ahead. And then when things come up, it could be harder to get leave on shorter notice, so they end up resorting to sick leave just to get days off. One controller we talked to, who works at a facility in the Midwest that handles high-altitude traffic, said they were initially hopeful about all this renewed attention on air traffic control from the public and lawmakers. But they were disappointed that the plan to fix everything seemed to focus on equipment upgrades and longer-term hiring goals over these quality of life concerns. That controller said, quote, "the morale just really plummets at that point," and they said there was nothing there to actually help current controllers in the short or the mid-term. And, quote, "honestly, it's more demoralizing than if they weren't talking about us at all."
CHANG: Wow. OK, well, Joel Rose, let's turn to you now. How did the working conditions even get to this point for air traffic controllers?
ROSE: Well, the FAA has been struggling to hire enough controllers to keep pace with retirements. That was exacerbated also by the COVID-19 pandemic, which halted in-person training at the FAA's academy in Oklahoma. Currently, the FAA has fewer than 11,000 certified controllers, more than 3,000 short of its nationwide targets. All of this was pretty well-known inside the aviation industry, but it really broke through with the public this year, first with the midair collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport back in January, which definitely focused attention on the staffing shortage there.
CHANG: Yeah.
ROSE: And then we saw some high-profile equipment problems in the facility that handles traffic around the airport in Newark, New Jersey, just outside of New York. There were several serious radar and telecommunications outages there. That led to major flight delays and cancellations at what is one of the nation's busiest airports.
CHANG: And what's the Trump administration doing about all of this?
ROSE: So Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has made rebuilding the national air traffic control system a priority in his first months on the job. The Trump administration is vowing to modernize the air traffic equipment and facilities across the country. This month, Congress, as we heard, approved $12.5 billion for that purpose in the budget reconciliation law. Though, Sean Duffy said today that is only a down payment. And ultimately, it will take about $31 billion in total to do this job.
Duffy has also promised to supercharge the hiring of new controllers. In a statement to NPR, the FAA says it's pushing to recruit more young people with bonuses for new hires, also shortening the hiring process by months and expanding the number of training slots that are available at the academy in Oklahoma City. And the FAA is also adding incentives to keep controllers who are closer to retirement on the job for longer.
CHANG: OK, all of this sounds good. But Joe Hernandez, what do the air traffic controllers that you talked to say about the Trump administration's modernization plan?
HERNANDEZ: Well, everybody seems to agree that much of this technology is, in fact, very old. Some controllers say it's about time that it is getting replaced, and some others say it's doing the job that it needs to do. But the bigger issue, I think, is where the administration's priorities are. These controllers say the FAA really needs to focus on addressing some of these quality of life concerns they have. And one way - perhaps the main way - to do that is that given these entrenched staffing issues that could take years to fix, is pay raises. The pay scales for controllers haven't been renegotiated in nine years, but that's not really being discussed right now.
ROSE: And I talked to the head of the union about that - the union that represents air traffic controllers, Nick Daniels, who's the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association. Daniels said he hears these complaints from controllers, too, but he says there is a reason that the union is not talking publicly about pay raises. Daniels says the union stands to lose more than it would gain from trying to negotiate a new contract right now with the Trump administration, which has been, as we know, slashing the federal workforce since it came to power.
NICK DANIELS: You can't be shortsighted when you're talking about 15,000 people's lives. And just screaming pay to scream pay is shortsighted.
ROSE: Daniels says the union is looking for areas where it can find agreement with the Trump administration, and that includes this modernized equipment and infrastructure push.
CHANG: OK, but what are they going to do about the problem of burnout?
HERNANDEZ: I mean, it's a good question. Burnout is real for so many of these controllers. And we talked to one who was so burnt out that he left the FAA. His name is Chris Dickinson, and he found a job doing the same thing in Australia a few months ago. And he says he met some controllers on a family trip to Australia a few years back and told them he'd never had weekends off.
CHRIS DICKINSON: They were just completely blown away at the fact that anyone could go more than six months without having weekends off, let alone 12.5 years at that point. And it really made me kind of look back and go, what is it that I'm willing to accept in my short amount of time on this Earth?
HERNANDEZ: Dickinson says air traffic control is a wonderful career, but for his friends and former coworkers back in the U.S. at the FAA, it's really just not right now because of these staffing issues and low morale.
CHANG: Yeah. That is NPR's Joe Hernandez and Joel Rose. Thank you to both of you.
ROSE: You're welcome.
HERNANDEZ: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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