Flying into danger

America's air traffic control system is in crisis. Can it be fixed?

Air traffic control
"It's a crisis and the public doesn't know about it"
(Image credit: Getty Images)

What's wrong with the system?

For starters, there's an acute shortage of air traffic controllers, who are responsible for directing about 45,000 flights carrying 2.9 million passengers every day. The Federal Aviation Administration has about 13,800 certified controllers at more than 300 facilities, which is 3,000 below the recommended staffing number. With 90% of control towers understaffed, controllers are routinely expected to put in 10-hour days, six days a week. And those controllers have to rely on what the FAA itself describes as "outdated technologies that are unable to meet" modern demands. Partly because of those cascading problems, 2023 saw 19 "serious runway incursions" at U.S. airports where a collision was narrowly avoided, the highest number in nearly a decade. Public concern over air traffic control swelled in January after 67 people died in a midair crash between a military helicopter and a commercial flight over Washington, D.C.—a preliminary FAA report said staffing at the control tower was abnormally low for the shift. And concern surged again in April, when controllers for New Jersey's Newark Liberty International Airport lost communication with planes for about 90 seconds due to a single burned-out copper wire. The next month, an air traffic control facility in Colorado suffered a similar outage. "It's a crisis and the public doesn't know about it," said one Newark controller. "Nobody wants to pay attention until lives are lost."

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