NATCA Bookshelf

N A T I O N A L A I R T R A F F I C C O N T R O L L E R S A S S O C I A T I O N | W W W . N AT C A . O R G N i W To d a y 23 23 23 23 ISSUES C o n t r o l l e r Tr a i n i n g C h a l l e n g e s The FAA must have sufficient funding to train each of the approximately 2,000 new hires annually at the FAA Academy, and provide them with classroom, simulator, and on-the-job training instruction at their assigned facilities. New hires who are admitted into the FAA Academy in 2025 will require between two and four years of training before they become fully certified and capable of separating traffic on their own. Another contributing factor in the length of controller training time and attrition is the underfunding of simulation training and an inability, often because of staffing shortages, to use qualified controllers in the simulation portion of certification training. Of the FAA's 263 towers and tower/approach control facilities, only 41 have one of the two permanent platforms of tower simulators. Thankfully, the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 directs the FAA to deploy tower simulator systems (TSS) to all FAA towers to enhance and expedite training time. These systems have been proven to reduce controller training times by 25%. Understaffing within individual facilities also forces the FAA to delay or cancel required refresher, recurrent, and crew resource management training for CPCs. This training is paramount to developing and maintaining CPC skills, such as issuing safety alerts and recovering from unforeseen circumstances. CPCs train new hires, often taking those controllers away from their primary job of separating traffic. Thus, facilities that already are at critical staffing levels, requiring mandatory overtime and a six-day work week to fully staff all positions, face a difficult situation when the way to improve staffing levels is for CPCs to undertake the time- intensive process of training academy graduates. In some cases, the trainees at a facility outnumber the CPCs, which creates a backlog of trainees and sparse training opportunities. As a result, the FAA relies on contractors to provide on-the-job training during simulation. However, even when contract instructors are available for training, they are often hired at facilities where they never have worked, meaning that they may not be familiar with the facilities' unique operations. Further, many contract instructors have not been operationally current for years. In some cases, contract instructors are capable of providing only general information during simulation training. Although CPCs are better equipped to serve as simulation/classroom instructors, historically low CPC staffing levels have hindered their ability to do so. In addition to instructor availability concerns, most radar facilities only have one person who is proficient with the simulation development software, which creates a bottleneck when that person is unavailable. This issue also persists at the FAA's 21 Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCCs), in which the average training time is nearly 2.5 years. However, at two en route facilities that fully engaged CPCs in the simulation/classroom training process, Los Angeles Center (ZLA) and Fort Worth Center (ZFW), training time was reduced by 8-12 months. When CPCs provide training within a facility, it allows the most relevant information to be passed directly to trainees, which streamlines the learning process. For instance, from 2009 to 2014 at ZLA, training times were reduced by more than a year, which allowed at least 26 controllers to reach certification faster. This is an example of how the FAA and NATCA worked together to decrease certification times and take a step toward addressing the CPC staffing challenges. N a t i o n a l Tr a i n i n g I n i t i a t i ve The National Training Initiative (NTI) began in July 2019 and is a collaborative effort between the FAA and NATCA. The NTI is based on a joint expectation for training developmental controllers that has resulted in a more efficient and effective progression of trainees towards CPC status. This past December, the FAA and NATCA signed an agreement that increased on-the-job-training (OJT) premium pay. For the first time, controllers will be provided OJT premium pay when providing instruction in the simulation environment. This agreement demonstrates that both FAA and NATCA leadership are committed to training and to the NTI's program, expectations, and goals. Currently, there are a large number of developmental trainees in various stages in training. In order to achieve increased CPC certifications, it will take a concerted effort on behalf of both the FAA and NATCA to reach this shared goal. For instance, the NTI collaboratively established target On the Job Training (OJT) hours to be obtained by individual trainees on a weekly basis at their S t a ffi n g A n d Tr a i n i n g C h a l l e n g e s Pe r s i s t Issue

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