Walk through an air traffic control facility these days, and you will notice that the single-most common tool for the people who work there is bifocals. You will also notice that almost everyone is 50-plus years old. While almost any other workplace has a mix of rookies, mid-career people, and veterans, air traffic controllers look like a class reunion from the mid-1970s. The fact that most air traffic controllers are approaching the FAA’s mandatory retirement age of 56 would be little more than curiosity except that it raises two big questions about the next few years: Who will the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recruit to mind the store—or towers and radar rooms in this case—and how will the system pay to train replacements?

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The fact that most air traffic controllers are approaching the FAA’s mandatory retirement age of 56 would be little more than curiosity except that it raises two big questions about the next few years: Who will the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recruit to mind the store—or towers and radar rooms in this case—and how will the system pay to train replacements? The situation echoes a historic event in the early 1980s when President Ronald Reagan fired more than 10,000 air traffic controllers for going on strike and most of the people now on the job came to the FAA in the great rush of hiring. The FAA took a shortcut in restaffing back then that is setting the stage for problems in the near future. The FAA hired military air traffic controllers, which saved several months or perhaps even years in training time, but the new hires were in their 20s then, and many of them now have the minimum number of civilian and military years of service needed to retire—25. And according to the Government Accountability Office, in 2007 alone almost 10 percent of the current air traffic controllers will become eligible to retire, with the majority hitting the mandatory retirement age just a few years later.

The wave of retirements is “a fact that anyone with a calendar can anticipate,” emphasizes John Carr, who served as union president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association until September 2006. In addition he predicts that an unfavorable contract imposed on air traffic controllers earlier this year will rush some out the door.

Carr also points out that during fiscal year 2005, the FAA hired only 13 new controllers, and controller staffing is now down around 14,300, from a peak of 15,600 in 2003. Further compounding the impending crisis is the fact that the FAA has hired so few people for so long that not only has the agency almost forgotten how to restaff, but it also faces the secondary problem of how to pay for hiring and training new recruits plus all the new equipment needed for them to do the job. Adding to the uncertainty, the tax that pays for most of the FAA system, a 7.5 percent levy on airline tickets, expires in 2007 along with a tax on aviation fuel, which is the main contribution private pilots, charter operators, and fractional operators make. Congress is considering a variety of replacements, including charging for individual services.

The overall result is that air traffic control is changing. In a few years new people will run the air traffic system, and it may also be run a different way with a different financial basis. Everyone who flies hopes that the air traffic system will improve. The system handles about 50,000 flights a day and does it safely, but by the FAA’s count delays were 443,000 last year, up from 419,000 in 2000 and 311,000 in 1991. Flying on a private plane will insulate travelers from security checkpoint lines, rescreenings at the gate, and related delays, but in many cases, it will not insulate the flight from air traffic delays.

One likely outcome, which is already in progress, is privatizing at least part of the system. The United States, which by far has the largest air traffic system in the world, is far from being the first to dabble with the idea of privatization. In 1996 NavCanada took over from a government ministry, Transport Canada, and the United Kingdom privatized its National Air Traffic Services system in 2001.

Currently the FAA is privatizing the system around the edges. At 231 control towers in 46 states, it has handed over operations to private companies, which generally pay air traffic controllers less for the same work. By the end of this year the FAA plans to privatize the airports in Arlington, Texas; Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi; Leesburg, Florida; and Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In some cases though there is less here than meets the eye since the tower controllers are retired FAA air traffic controllers.

The agency has already contracted out the work of the Flight Service Stations, offices that provide private and corporate pilots with weather briefings and other important information. Lockheed-Martin, the winning bidder, has cut the network of stations to 20 from 58. If the agency follows a private business model and begins to charge for services like flight-following (in which a air traffic controller keeps an eye on a plane in uncontrolled airspace) or weather briefings, some people think that pilots will try to get away without those. “Your safety decision are colored by charges,” notes Ruth Marlin, whose term as vice president of the air traffic controllers’ union also ended in September 2006. “And there’s always a resistance to charges,” she adds.

While the US Department of Transportation reports that it does not plan to impose charges on private planes, it leaves open the possibility of doing so on commercial flights, which includes airliners, air taxis, and everything in between—from charters to fractionals. The airlines argue that this is only fair because they are now paying more than their fair share for the air traffic system, but business aviation groups argue that the airlines create most of the costs by requiring the FAA to build a system that provides huge capacity at hub airports where scores of planes congregate and disperse again in short intervals.

How Congress will sort this out is not clear. Historically business aviation is very influential in Congress, but budget pressures are growing. In the longer term, say 20 years, the FAA has a different strategy: Cut the need for air traffic controllers, which would save on personnel costs—which are often more than $100,000 per controller annually and also cut the cost of training replacements. The FAA is already trying to do this by keeping the air traffic controllers at their radarscopes for more hours of the workday. By regulation air traffic controllers are limited to two hours at a stretch because the job requires intense concentration, but according to the agency in some cases they average less than four hours a day on position.

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