Man, the issue is FAA ATC rules indicate that you have to be under 31 years of age and you must retire at age 56. Add on top of that a requirement of four years of schooling and if you don’t make the choice to be part of ATC by age 27, you just are never going to be one.
I’m pretty sure there’s reasons behind the mandatory retirement age. But dang, it’s hard convincing anyone under 30 that they should pick up a pretty stressful job.
Under 31, retire by 56 is specifically due to the pension requirements. It’s to make sure anyone who is hired is eligible for it when they have to retire. It requires 25 years of service.
I haven’t seen anything specifically denoting why you have to retire by age 56 but it’s implied that it’s just because younger people tend to have faster reaction times and are better at multitasking, etc.
I remember seeing an article years ago around 2000-2002 era. They claimed that the 56 retirement age was because of heart attacks and other stress/age related medical issues. Basically you don’t want Lesley Neilson having a heart attack while quipping jokes at you over the air.
Probably less absurd than it appears. Many modern videogames require gamers to manage multiple situations in real time under pressure while competing with other gamers. A skil you can transfer to ‘manage airplanes trying to use the runways while giving direction to incoming planes avoiding accidents and deaths’. I can imagine that must be attractive for adrenaline lovers.
It’s not ridiculous, but it’s not a slam dunk either, I think.
The average gamer isn’t necessarily good at playing them. I would even say the majority. There’s a chasm of difference between a pro-level StarCraft player and some dude who hops on Warzone with his drinking buddies every few nights.
At the end of the day all this is is a semi-desperate HR stunt to try and get bodies into our massively overtaxed towers.
https://www.faa.gov/air-traffic-controller-qualifications
There requirements would eliminate the vast majority of gamers. They want people in perfect physical and mental health (perfect vision and perfect hearing) with bachelors degrees. No drugs. And you have to pass a qualifying exam.
Then you are going to be working 3-4 years at low pay until you are fully certified.
You’re a perfect physical specimen, not for long, let us destroy that by making you sit here and watch this screen for the next 25 years.
Yeah … maybe the bachelor’s degree isn’t really necessary?
Or maybe they could just pay better.
Or maybe they could invest in a (very well tested and absolutely not vibe-coded) computerized system that takes some of the mental burden and stress out of the job.
But out of those 3 options, dropping the degree requirement is the only one that doesn’t cost a lot of money, so…
You’re also getting no say in where you end up. It could be any city in the United States.
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I’d give it 10 years and most of the ATC system will be automated except for ground and tower operations.
They’ll probably have one person monitoring the traffic separation of what 20 controllers once did.
They’ve been preparing and setting it up for the last 20 years.
AI? Seriously?
you want to put the lives of thousands into the hands of technology that can’t tell you how many Rs are in Strawberry?
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Reminds me of Armada by Ernest Cline to some degree lol
