Trump group turns to unlikely group to fill a lot wanted air site visitors controller jobs – avid gamers | EUROtoday

Facing a nationwide scarcity of air site visitors controllers, the Trump administration has turned to an unconventional pool of individuals for assist: online game lovers.

On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration launched a one-minute YouTube advert, urging avid gamers to swap their Xboxes and PlayStations for radar shows.

“You’ve been training for this,” the advert declares over the pulsing beat of music “Heads Will Roll.”

“Become an air traffic controller,” it continues. “It’s not a game. It’s a career.”

The video highlights a mean wage of $155,000 after three years, and notes that the FAA will start accepting functions April 17.

The FAA, which oversees aviation security throughout the nation, mentioned in an announcement that candidates should be U.S. residents, below 31 years of age and fluent in English.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reposted the advert on X, urging his followers to “watch this.”

“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Duffy mentioned in an announcement to The New York Times. Targeting avid gamers, he mentioned, “taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.”

Some air site visitors specialists instructed the outlet that avid gamers may deliver worthwhile abilities to the airline business although others questioned whether or not the recruitment push will resolve broader staffing shortages.

“When you bring on someone who has gaming experience, particularly with air traffic control, they have an edge up,” Michael O’Donnell, an aerospace guide and former FAA official, mentioned. “They’re coming in with a skill set. But it doesn’t replace aptitude, or discipline, or decision making under pressure.”

The Independent has contacted the FAA and the Department of Transportation for remark.

The business has been weighed down by a persistent scarcity of air site visitors controllers for years. Over the previous decade, the variety of air site visitors controllers has declined by roughly 6 p.c, even because the variety of flights has risen by 10 p.c.

“These dedicated professionals continue to work short-staffed, often six days a week, ten hours a day for years at a time, using outdated equipment and in rundown facilities that are in many cases more than 60 years old and are long overdue to be modernized and/or replaced,” Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, instructed Congress final 12 months.

More than 300 absolutely licensed controllers have joined the FAA since September 2024, in line with The New York Timesbringing the overall quantity to about 11,000. In August 2025, the company mentioned it could require 14,663 controllers in complete to be absolutely staffed.

Airports are nonetheless going through an issue offered by the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, which has dragged on for greater than 50 days. For a lot of this time, Transportation Security Administration officers went with out pay, main a whole bunch of officers to give up and 1000’s to name off work.

In late March, President Donald Trump signed a memo ordering Homeland Security to seek out the cash to pay TSA staff, and so they began to obtain backpay.