During Monday’s press briefing at Newark Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about the ongoing air traffic controller shortage.
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00:00In regard to controllers, so that's been a big topic of conversation.
00:06You all know that we're 3,000 controllers short across the country right now.
00:11And that has been seen probably to the biggest extent at the Philly TRACON, which services the Newark Airport.
00:20And so just some background numbers.
00:23There's 22 controllers at Philly.
00:25There's five supervisors.
00:27Six of those 22 controllers are on leave right now.
00:32So there's only 16 controllers that work at the Philly TRACON.
00:36However, there are 16 controllers who are training right now at the Philly TRACON for this airspace.
00:45And most of them are experienced controllers.
00:50And so on a rolling basis, over the next year, we're going to have more controllers come online into the Philly TRACON.
00:58In addition, we just brought in another six trainees into the Philly TRACON to also train up.
01:06So the problem we're seeing with controllers, it can't be fixed overnight.
01:10It takes time to train up on this airspace.
01:12But we've addressed the problem by bringing more controllers to train up in the Philly TRACON that, again, controls Newark here.
01:22And over the course of the next months, you're going to see improvements in this airport, in this airspace.
01:30And, again, day one, we have the airport.
01:34You're going to see improvements, again, in the telecom.
01:37And then you're going to see improvements with the staffing issues with regard to controllers.