Duffy: Effort to recruit gamers as air traffic controllers ‘wildly successful’

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is targeting video gamers to serve in air traffic controller roles, an effort Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described as “wildly successful.” 

“This has been wildly successful, and if you think just what these gamers are doing on screens, they’re talking and there’s a lot of things going on,” Duffy said in an interview at the Semafor World Economy Summit.

“They’re used to that, and that’s actually what you’re doing in a tower in a facility, and so they’ve become well suited from the games they play to actually have a great life job that pays well and they can support their families,” he added. 

The FAA had 6,000 applicants as of 7 a.m. EDT Friday, just seven hours after the application first launched, Duffy confirmed to Talcott. The FAA will close applications once they hit 8,000, which Duffy predicted would be reached as early as noon Friday.  

Duffy originally announced the targeted hiring campaign on April 10. The FAA has released multiple YouTube ads since, promising high paychecks and “not just a game” but a “career.” 

“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt. This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller,” Duffy said in a statement. 

The FAA has scrambled to hire and keep on enough air traffic controllers for decades. Duffy said in November that the amount of air traffic controllers retiring daily had tripled amid the government shutdown, which left federal workers without paychecks for more than a month. 

“This is going to live on in air travel, well beyond the time frame that this government opens back up,” Duffy said in November. 

In his 2027 budget proposal, Trump requested $481 million to help the FAA with an air traffic controller hiring surge as a part of his continued push to “supercharge” controller recruitment and retention.

Leading up to his November 2024 win, future Trump administration officials polled about 250 air traffic academy graduates, only three of which reported not being gamers, Duffy told Talcott. The hiring campaign is the most recent effort by the Trump administration to fill staffing gaps in the air travel industry.

“You may think I’m crazy. Like, gamers for air traffic controllers?” Duffy said. “This came about, we polled 250 random students at our academy and only three of them were not gamers. Like, huh, there must be a correlation between gaming and people wanting to become air traffic controllers. So we’ve leaned into that community.” 

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