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Comment by hbosch | Hacker News Reader

My brother in law is an ATC. Didn't go to school for it, but studied and went through the training and passed the sequential tests required to get a seat in the building. He enjoys the job a ton.

Based on just observing him through the process, it seems like there's a combination of things that might keep younger people away from being an ATC. One might be the unfortunate politicization of government jobs at large, and especially how people like ATC's get affected during those pesky "government shutdowns". There's also, I think, the fact that being an ATC is more or less an "invisible job" to many people and especially college educated people. Also, the job itself can be stressful (but nothing like the horror story myths I've read about, apparently) and the exams to get in whittle down the herd pretty dramatically it sounds like.

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There's no shortage of applicants. They get tons of applicants every year, but the FAA academy can only accept a limited number to their 3-4 month training program. Then they wash out roughly 50% of the trainees with their final exam, which is a set of ATC scenarios on a simulator. Existing controllers have to take the same exam to become a trainer at the academy, and roughly 1/3 of them also fail, so one could argue that the standards are set far too high. The survivors go on to their first posting, where they spend another year or two training before they can actually control live traffic on their own, and more wash out in this stage if they fail to certify.

I think it depends on your definition of "younger people" in this case. For the "off the street" hires like your brother in law, those postings require you to be under 31.

That said, there isn't really a good path to ATC for those 18-22 either. The off the street bids require something along the lines of "4 years progressively responsible work experience" to even be eligible to start the process. The Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) schools exist, but have not provided much meaningful benefit to graduates since the FAA's changes to the hiring process in December 2013.

When I was offered a training slot 30 years ago, I was told they had better results the younger you were. 18 year olds could get in with the right test results. I suspect the establishment and CTI relationships intended to close up the rate of younger onboarding as the post-Reagan guard got older.

Back then journeymen controllers in Chicago were making $150K.

I get the impression that whatever the FAA intended with the CTI schools, it didn't work out as they wanted. I attended a CTI school in 2013-2014 but left when they modified the hiring process to essentially devalue the CTI path. In recent years it looks like the CTI schools have clawed back a little bit more preferential treatment when it comes to weighing ATSA results, but it's not like it was before.

I don't resent it though - it sounds like at the time CTI students weren't much more successful than off the street hires at the academy, nor were the different CTI schools very consistent in their quality and curriculum. I went to a good one, and was sad to leave as it was a ton of fun, but I've heard stories of some CTI programs being little more than a few lecture-based classes and a certificate.

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