Great at gaming? US air traffic control wants you to apply

1659447091 42 points 54 comments April 11, 2026
www.bbc.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (12 comments)

HelloUsername

Source: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/trumps-transportation-secretary... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9MczWfLpBcw

flibbityflob

Have they tried paying them consistently?

phoe-krk

Please correct me I'm wrong: > The ad also highlights the salary on offer to controllers, saying it is $155,000 (£115,000) after three years of work. Unless the US government shuts down again , at which point you stop being paid, you are required to keep working, you have no right to strike[0], and the competences you've built across this job are largely hard to directly make use of elsewhere so the incentive to job-hop is low. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...

altairprime

What video game on Steam allows me to practice air traffic control? How can I determine if I have a skill at the logistics of managing planes on a radar screen? Where can I join a multiplayer lobby where at game start we're assigned to either give radio commands to planes, or interpret radio commands and respond on behalf of planes, with at least two players for each? How does anti-griefing work in that environment? If that game existed, I would try it. Does it?

giorgioz

After Theme Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Park_(video_game) and Theme Hospital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_Hospital videogames now it's the turn of: THEME TRAFFIC CONTROLLER

cyanydeez

great at a skill but dont need money, ve disrespexted by politicians as pawns

altmanaltman

> The Xbox one logo appears at the start of the video before dissolving into a montage that cuts between images of men playing various online computer games and people, including women, in air traffic control towers looking at their own computers. > "You've been training for this," the ad says. Wow looks like Microsoft were not kidding with their 'this is also an xbox' ad campaign. Also really console gamers is who you target for this role? USG is becoming a joke

latexr

If you’re considering it, you should probably watch Last Week Tonight’s investigation first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeABJbvcJ_k

red_admiral

I know this is culture-war stuff, but on the balance I think it's true that the FAA deprioritised applicants from the AT/CTI programmes, that is training courses speficically to become ATCs. My main source is https://www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-story-of-the-fa... , and I'm assuming in particular that the screenshot of the letter in footnote 1 is genuine. In the section ended by footnote 16, there is a claim than in 2014 the FAA sent out just short of 3k job offer letters whereas in 2019 that had dropped to below 1k. That sounds like cutting off your own recruitment pipeline. It's also evidence that the FAA did not drop the standards for qualification and certification, which is reassuring.

vinni2

Where is the mighty AI when you need one.

charcircuit

AI should be able to handle the bulk of this work. "14,663 active controllers" is too much when you could have a single gamer + AI combo running it for multiple airports.

MrMember

Ten years ago the FAA was disqualifying candidates because the didn't say their worst subject in high school was science and today they're struggling with recruitment. Seems like a catastrophe of their own making. https://kaisoapbox.com/projects/faa_biographical_assessment/

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