'Starting to see cracks': Trump admin scrambling to hire air traffic controllers before 'disaster'

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy made an eyebrow-raising announcement while speaking to reporters on Thursday about the ongoing air traffic controller shortage.

While he didn't mention any specific incidents or locations, Duffy told CNN aviation reporter Pete Muntean that he was keenly aware of the danger associated with the need to hire more people to staff airport control towers and keep American skies safe.

"You're starting to see cracks in the system. And you can see them in different locations," Duffy said. "And it's our job — all of us working together, to not wait until there's a disaster — it's our job to actually see over the horizon what the issues are and fix it before there is an incident that we will seriously regret."

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Air traffic controllers are in short supply across the United States due to the stressful nature of the job and the requirement that they retire by age 56 — with many opting to take early retirement when presented with the opportunity. Lately, the Department of Transportation has offered air traffic controllers financial incentives if they forgo early retirement and work up until their mandatory retirement age.

In January, when a mid-air collision between a military helicopter and an American Airlines passenger flight resulted in the deaths of dozens of people, the New York Times found that the controller who was on duty at the time was doing the jobs of two different people. And around the time of that crash, the Times published an investigation in which the publication discovered hundreds of "near-misses" in which aircraft from several major passenger airlines narrowly avoided crashing. And the Times found that 99% of air traffic control towers were understaffed in 2023.

The stress of being an air traffic controller may be compounded by mass firings of federal employees during President Donald Trump's second administration. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) fired hundreds of Federal Aviation Administration workers earlier this year who worked on radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance.

"Staffing decisions should be based on an individual agency’s mission-critical needs,” David Spero, who is the national president of Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (PASS) told CNN in March. “To do otherwise is dangerous when it comes to public safety. And it is especially unconscionable in the aftermath of three deadly aircraft accidents in the past month.”

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