Thousands of people applied to be air traffic controllers after the Department of Transportation and Federal Aviation Administration rolled out a campaign aimed at recruiting video gamers.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at Semafor World Economy in Washington, D.C. that 6,000 people applied since the hiring window opened at midnight Friday. The portal closed once it received 8,000 applications.
“We’ve had a flood of young people coming in that want to be air traffic controllers,” Duffy said. “They have to be qualified. We have to go through an assessment process. But this has been wildly successful.”
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There’s long been an air traffic controller shortage in the U.S. Government data shows that the number of air traffic controllers declined by about 6% in the last decade. Recent government shutdowns have not helped matters.
In the Transportation Department and FAA’s announcement of its campaign to recruit gamers, Duffy said to reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, “we need to adapt.”
“This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller,” he said in a statement.
An ad went out, which opened with the Xbox logo, showed images of people playing popular games such as Fortnite and touting possible salary one could make.
“Are you up for the challenge? You’ve been training for this,” the ad stated. “Become an air traffic controller.”
In his interview at the Semafor event, Duffy said that the skills gamers use to play are similar to those used by air traffic controllers.
“If you think [about] just what these gamers are doing on screens, they’re talking, and there’s a lot of things going on,” Duffy said. “They’re used to that, and that’s actually what you’re doing in a tower in a facility, and they’ve become well-suited from the games they’ve played to actually have a great life job that pays well and can support their families.”
