11/28/2025
The FAA says it is launching one of its biggest air traffic controller hiring pushes in decades, aiming to bring on about 8,900 new controllers by 2028 as part of a “supercharge” effort backed by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The agency hired 2,026 controllers in fiscal 2025, beating its goal of 2,000, after bringing in 1,811 the year before, and plans to hire more than 2,200 in 2026 as it fills every seat at its training academy in Oklahoma City.
Even with that surge, the system will still feel tight. FAA workforce plans and outside analyses say the agency is roughly 3,000 to 3,500 controllers short of where it wants to be, with many facilities relying on mandatory overtime and six day weeks to keep the schedule running. Retirements, early exits and high washout rates in training mean that even hiring nearly 9,000 new controllers by the end of 2028 would result in a net gain of only about 1,000 additional certified controllers in the FAA’s ranks, according to the agency’s own forecast.
For travelers, this is the quiet backstory behind a lot of those “staffing” delay messages. When there are not enough controllers on a shift, the FAA slows the rate of arrivals and departures, which can back flights up for hours. The new hiring push is meant to chip away at that problem while the agency also modernizes old computer systems, but officials admit it will take years before passengers really feel the difference. For now, the U.S. is trying to rebuild a controller workforce that was allowed to shrink for too long.
