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The longest government shutdown in US history hit air traffic controllers hard. 13,000 worked without pay for over a month, taking up jobs driving for DoorDash and Instacart to survive. But staff shortages in US control towers go back decades before the shutdown. Despite being fatigued and overworked, the remaining controllers hold thousands of lives in their hands every day. Why is directing planes one of the most challenging jobs in the world? And why are there so few left to get passengers safely on the ground?
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00:00All right, Delta 24-52, Contagion Juliet, Mike to Lima, Charlie, monitor the tower, 1-2-3-2-8-5.
00:06400 feet above Atlanta-Hartsfield Airport, air traffic controllers oversee the skies of the world's busiest airport.
00:13Firing off commands to pilots.
00:15Delta 393, Atlanta Ground, runway 27R, taxi via Lima, hold short, taxi via Dixie.
00:19They juggle 2,100 landings and departures a day, and all kinds of weather.
00:24This is one of the highest stress jobs out there.
00:26They have to manage hundreds of aircraft with thousands of lives on board every day.
00:30And the job's only gotten harder in the last few years.
00:33Beginning in October 2025, 13,000 air traffic controllers worked without pay for more than a month during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.
00:43Some were taking on gig work, like driving for DoorDash or Instacart, and having to make ends meet even when they were already working up to 60 hours a week.
00:52Before the shutdown, there was already a shortage of controllers.
00:55Many were working 10-hour days, six days a week.
00:59Controllers are tired, overstressed, and overworked.
01:02So it's just not really sustainable.
01:04The shortage dates back to 1981, when President Reagan fired more than 11,000 air traffic controllers who went on strike.
01:11Controller staffing has never really recovered, despite the subsequent surge in air traffic.
01:16To give some perspective of how this isn't really an easy fix, we are about 3,000 controllers short, and it takes about $100,000 just to train one controller.
01:28These shortages can create dangerous situations.
01:32In January 2025, when an American Airlines flight crashed into a military helicopter in Washington, D.C., killing 67, there was just one person doing the job of two air traffic controllers.
01:43In May 2025, at Newark Liberty International, a single controller and a trainee worked a three-hour shift by themselves.
01:52Many air traffic controllers had to take trauma leave just because of the stress and being overtired that the situation caused.
01:58A year before the shutdown, Atlanta's airport, the nation's busiest, had just 37 controllers on staff in the tower, when it needed 52.
02:08I know it's a big ask. It's a lot of money, and it's a lot of time and effort to invest in each controller.
02:13But if we're going to allow airlines to keep expanding their flights, we need controllers to keep up with that.
02:20Back in 2020, we went inside the Atlanta airport tower, the tallest in the U.S., to see why it's so hard to be an air traffic controller.
02:27This is Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, and these are its five runways.
02:34And here's the control tower.
02:35It takes a rotating staff of 58 traffic controllers to keep the airport running.
02:41Pre-pandemic, they directed 909,000 flights through takeoff and landing each year.
02:46These controllers are responsible for any planes inside Atlanta-Hartsfield airspace, five miles out and 4,000 feet above the airport.
02:54Once a plane enters Atlanta's territory, air traffic controllers are in charge of communicating with pilots over radio.
03:01They direct pilots in the air through safe landings and pilots on the ground through takeoffs.
03:06The goal?
03:07Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. What can you do to help us be more efficient?
03:11Well, the one thing that we're not going to do is make sure that we compromise safety in that equation.
03:16But the job isn't easy.
03:18There's a lot of dynamic decisions. If an aircraft is coming into land and they have to go around because of an unstable approach, the weather didn't cooperate, they couldn't get the runway in sight, you have to be ready to make a decision.
03:30To become a fully qualified controller, it can take up to five years of classroom, simulator, and on-the-job training.
03:36But if they make it, the average controller in Georgia makes $145,000 a year.
03:43A job in Atlanta's tower is one of the most coveted ATC positions in the U.S.
03:48Candidates go through a rigorous hiring process, which can take...
03:51Somewhere just under a year, we're getting closer to six to nine months.
03:56Once they've been hired, incoming controllers start on the simulator.
03:59So any new controller that would come here, they would initially come here and do book work, and then follow it up with the book work, they would come in the simulator room.
04:06A new controller will do multiple pass-fail scenarios.
04:09But on the simulator, they'll have fewer planes to juggle than the real deal in the tower.
04:13Then they'll have an evaluation, and then if they pass that evaluation, they can head up to the towers.
04:18We have two controllers working there today. One of them is in training.
04:22There's never really a slow period to speak of.
04:25Though air traffic always picks up in the summer, and days before and after holidays.
04:30But whether it's Christmas Eve or just another Tuesday, controllers have to stay focused.
04:35I don't know that we want people to be comfortable. We want people to be on edge. We want people to be at the top of their game.
04:43Controllers have to remember and monitor up to 30 planes at once.
04:47That's a lot to think about, especially since studies show the human brain can only handle seven things in short-term memory at a time.
04:54I had about 25 to 30 aircraft all on my frequency at one time.
04:58They're all taxing out for departure.
04:59But once I said, monitor the tower, 1-2-3-0-8-5, that's when they got off my frequency.
05:04So, you know, at one time you could have a lot.
05:06Then one minute later it could be all gone.
05:08The job's so mentally draining that the Federal Aviation Administration allows controllers to work for only two hours before they're required to take a break.
05:17To help make their work easier, controllers' jobs in the tower are highly specific.
05:21Each runway is assigned either takeoff or landings.
05:25That controller is just focused on that runway, that specific runway and that specific runway only.
05:30The controller who clears planes for takeoff or landing is called the local controller.
05:34There are two or three of them in the tower at once.
05:38This gentleman's working what we call local five.
05:40And local five is handling, at the moment, all the arrival aircraft coming in from the east.
05:45Then there's the ground controller.
05:47This guy focuses on directing traffic on the ground, telling planes which runway to taxi to.
05:52So in the case of an approach and landing, it might start with the local control saying this to the pilot.
05:57It'll be Delta-222, runway 8L, win calm, clear to land.
06:02We'll turn it over to the ground controller as they exit.
06:05Delta-222, contact ground, 119.2.
06:09They'll go over to ground control.
06:10Ground control will tell them which direction to taxi to get them over to the ramp.
06:14Controllers have universal rules to follow to make sure everyone is safe.
06:18First, there's the lingo.
06:20All right, 1123, taxi ramp, keep moving, traffic behind you, have a good day.
06:23The international language for air traffic control is English.
06:27They also have special terminology, so no two words will get confused.
06:30Runway 2, 7-on-1, right, follow southwest.
06:32The guys at Chicago O'Hare or PDK or Atlanta Tower say the same things for most of our control instructions.
06:41It doesn't deviate, and that consistency is what helps us keep communications down to a minimum.
06:46Minimal talking is important because every plane and every controller share the same radio frequency.
06:54They're all in the same telephone call.
06:5815 airplanes here in Atlanta.
07:00Short calls aren't the only way controllers ensure efficiency.
07:03These strips help the controllers keep track of all the planes moving through that process.
07:07Each one represents a plane.
07:09It has the flight number, the airline, the city the plane's going to or coming from, and the departure or arrival time.
07:16Once the flight plan is generated at its proposed time, as you've seen right here, these will print out.
07:21This flight, Delta 1904, is an international flight.
07:24It's going from Atlanta down to Marigot.
07:26So Delta 904.
07:27And this aircraft here is a Boeing 757-200.
07:32This airplane is scheduled to depart at 1542 Zulu.
07:36When he departs, he's requesting to go to 37,000 feet.
07:40So this strip would then, once it's ready, they'd place it in one of these strip holders.
07:45So you'd find the Delta 904, which is at Echo 9.
07:48They place Echo 9 on here and slide it to the appropriate side.
07:52A controller will have four or five of these strips active at once.
07:56This is how they sequence the planes in order of priority.
07:59The passenger doesn't see the bigger picture.
08:01The pilot thinks, I've been sitting here, why?
08:02The reason why he's holding is because we're trying to provide that sequence so that we can get maximum capacity out at one time.
08:08Sequencing can help move planes along quicker.
08:11But how exactly does it work?
08:12Here's an example.
08:14If two planes are going the same direction, say to San Antonio and Houston, they have to be at least four miles apart.
08:19So they don't run into each other in the sky, which means time waiting between takeoffs.
08:23But if a controller alters the sequence using those strips...
08:27So in this case, this is a west, a north, and a west.
08:30This aircraft's going to San Antonio, this aircraft's going to Milwaukee, and this aircraft's going to Houston.
08:34So we can depart 6,000 feet down the runway and airborne and roll all these.
08:39That Milwaukee flight can take off right behind the San Antonio flight.
08:43And now they've had three planes take off in the same amount of time.
08:46It makes a big difference for the ground controller to actually provide a good sequence because it's efficient.
08:53And the aircraft will keep going at the fastest rate.
08:56And that's what we do.
08:57And that's our job.
08:58Efficiency means fewer delays.
09:00If there are major delays, it disrupts air travel all throughout the country and parts of the world.
09:05In 2018, Atlanta-Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport was ranked the best airport in the U.S. for flight delays, with the highest percentage of on-time departures.
09:15Fifteen airplanes, we're looking at a minute behind one another, so it's not bad. Fifteen minutes.
09:20But of course, some things are out of their control.
09:22You can go upstairs and you can look out of that window and you can see nothing at all and still have movement taking place on your airport.
09:30Then there's days like today, clear in a million, that's what we call it, when it's just a beautiful sunshine day and you can see forever.
09:36We can move a whole bunch of airplanes.
09:38It's 132 an hour, I believe, is our arrival rate max.
09:43On a typical day, we try to stay right around in the 120s.
09:46Controllers also have to contend with inclement weather.
09:49Sometimes planes can't land on their first attempt, so they'll have to pull up, circle back, and get in line to land again.
09:54You have to be ready to make a decision, how am I going to get this airplane back up into the air, back over to the next air traffic control facility, so that they can re-sequence them back into our pattern.
10:05Luckily, some technological advancements have made this whole process a lot easier.
10:10Remember those strips?
10:11So a lot of this is automated now.
10:13While controllers may still use the physical strips, they also show up on monitors, and are automatically sent over to the next controller in the sequence.
10:21Also, technology means weather isn't as debilitating as it once was.
10:25There used to be a time when weather would shut your airport down.
10:29But now...
10:30Being able to forecast and project when that weather's coming, we're not surprised like we used to be.
10:35We go in the clouds sometimes, and that's when our equipment is all we got.
10:40ASDX, radar, and GPS positioning help controllers track a plane.
10:44We're able to use that technology now to actually separate and identify where those airplanes are legitimately, so we can use the term clear for takeoff, even though we can't see the physical runway any longer.
10:56But all that technology doesn't mean these controllers can be any less diligent.
11:01They have to be focused and undistracted nonstop.
11:05This is the busiest airport in the world.
11:07The number, the volume, I don't think many airports can handle what we do.
11:11That's the truth.
11:12Ardell 2452, container Juliet, Mike, the Wima, Charlie.
11:21Ardell 2452.
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