Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Details Efforts To Increase Air Traffic Controller Numbers

Forbes Breaking News

During Monday’s press briefing at Newark Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about plans to increase number of air traffic controllers.

Transcript

00:00Secretary, can you, I have two questions. One is the fiber that got laid and is getting tested.

00:08When is that, when do you expect that to come online?

00:12So we, I don't want to over promise and under deliver. So I just, this, we're looking at it,

00:20but our hope is at the end of June, early July, we can, we can switch it over.

00:25Okay. And then that's, that's the line from the Philly TRACON to N90. And that was the problem

00:32line that we had. For radar or for telecom? For telecom. Okay. And then the air traffic

00:37controllers, you mentioned that there's many in training that they should be able to roll out

00:42over the next year. Can you give us a little more particulars on that? Do you expect all of those

00:46air traffic controllers that are getting trained for area C to be, you know, rolling out like a

00:52year today? Like how, how can you just give more detail on that? So we have, so we have 22

00:56controllers, six are on leave right now. Okay. So it leaves us with 16 controllers in the Philly

01:03TRACON. And we have 16, there's a lot of 16s in here, so don't be confused. We have 16 in training.

01:0914 of those are experienced controllers from other airspaces. They have to get trained up in this

01:16airspace. And so depending on where they're at in the training will depend on when they roll out of

01:22training and become certified controllers for this airspace. I believe, Chris, we have another six

01:27that just came in on top of the 16. So there's a total now of 22 controllers in training. And so

01:35it does take time, right? You want to make sure you have well-trained certified controllers controlling

01:41your airspace. And so, again, they won't come out all at the same time, but they'll roll out over the

01:47course of the next, uh, months, uh, up to a year. So you'll start to see, um, reduced stress

01:53on the controller front as we go from month to month. Yes.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended