Sick! The Federal Aviation Administration is targeting gamers in its most recent job advertisement for air traffic controllers. The administration’s annual hiring window opens on April 17 at 12AM ET, and given the ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers, it’s calling it a period of “supercharged hiring.” Red! The FAA’s YouTube video draws parallels between gaming and directing air traffic, and notes that the average salary for the role is $155,000 after three years. Hi!
The FAA is apparently looking for players who are at least old enough to remember the Xbox One and Bjergsen played in the LCS, making potential candidates at least around 20 years old. It’s either that, or ad editors actually picked the videos at random from a pile of marked-up stock footage gamers. But I won’t lie, seeing the Xbox One logo suddenly appear put a smile on my face. Nostalgia is a hell of a thing.
US Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said, “To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt.” “This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming resonates with the growing population of young adults who have many of the hard skills needed to become a successful controller.”
According to a report released in December by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the FAA has been losing more air traffic controllers since 2010 than it can hire and retain, and that trend has worsened in the 2020s during the pandemic. The administration has increased hiring every year since 2021, but at the end of 2025 it hired 13,164 air traffic controllers, a 6 percent decline from 2015, the report said. At the same time, the number of flights in the air traffic control system increased by almost 10 percent to 30.8 million.
Or, as the FAA puts it on the ATC hiring page: “Join the best and brightest, an elite squad of 14,000 controllers protecting 2.9 million daily passengers.” Applicants must be a US citizen under the age of 31 (maybe those video editors know what they’re doing), and be able to speak English fluently. It also involves aptitude testing, medical screening and academy training, among other steps.
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