I mean, DOGE around and find out [1]. Between Hegseth and a gutted FAA it’s probably a matter of time before we see, best case, ATC reducing flight volumes.
Concerns about the FAA's air traffic control system date back decades.
2008: U.S. air traffic controller force in crisis
2009: JOBS: A Scramble to Add Air Traffic Controllers
2010: FAA Faces Challenges in ATC Staffing
2011: How Ronald Reagan Doomed The FAA To A Staffing Crisis Every 25 Years
2012: FAA's ATC Staffing Shortage Continues
2013: Tower at O’Hare May Be a Victim of Federal Cuts
2014: Blame the FAA for air-traffic controller shortage
2015: Union: Chronic shortage of air traffic controllers a crisis
2016: Why the U.S. Doesn't Have Enough Trained Air Traffic Controllers
2017: Breaking point: America's air traffic control
2018: Could air traffic controller shortage have impact on safety?
2019: Shutdown Sets Off Airport Delays as F.A.A. Announces Staffing Shortages
2020: A global shortage of air traffic controllers is being exacerbated by huge demand for flights
2021: Staff shortage, bad weather blamed for flight cancellations at JIA, airports nationwide
2022: What’s behind the US air traffic controller labor shortages
2023: Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink
2024: FAA still short about 3,000 air traffic controllers, new federal numbers show
2025: Concerns about the FAA's air traffic control system date back decades
JumpCrisscross · 3h ago
Right. The FAA has been understaffed for decades. Cutting its staff further is giving a starving patient a staph infection. The rate of actual failures, not stories about staffing, has gone up.
CGMthrowaway · 3h ago
Incidents at U.S. airports are making headlines in 2025, but these types of incidents are actually happening less often than in the past.
Here is a non-partisan question. Another thread mentions that there was a minimum of one near miss every month for the last 13 years. I thought that near misses were treated nearly as seriously as full blown disasters. The current administration may make it worse. But what explains the rot in the past?
wkat4242 · 1h ago
One a month is not a lot if you compare it to the total number of flights. And there's different grades of near misses. Some are not all that near.
The big ones like that JFK incident make the news but most don't.
I don't think it's really a partisan issue either. The FAA and especially the NTSB are pretty impartial and just care about the truth, what went wrong and how this can be avoided in the future.
Of course Trump makes it political by screaming DEI every time something happens, before there's even a preliminary investigation. But I wouldn't take that seriously. He does that with everything.
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[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2025/03/14/faa...
2008: U.S. air traffic controller force in crisis
2009: JOBS: A Scramble to Add Air Traffic Controllers
2010: FAA Faces Challenges in ATC Staffing
2011: How Ronald Reagan Doomed The FAA To A Staffing Crisis Every 25 Years
2012: FAA's ATC Staffing Shortage Continues
2013: Tower at O’Hare May Be a Victim of Federal Cuts
2014: Blame the FAA for air-traffic controller shortage
2015: Union: Chronic shortage of air traffic controllers a crisis
2016: Why the U.S. Doesn't Have Enough Trained Air Traffic Controllers
2017: Breaking point: America's air traffic control
2018: Could air traffic controller shortage have impact on safety?
2019: Shutdown Sets Off Airport Delays as F.A.A. Announces Staffing Shortages
2020: A global shortage of air traffic controllers is being exacerbated by huge demand for flights
2021: Staff shortage, bad weather blamed for flight cancellations at JIA, airports nationwide
2022: What’s behind the US air traffic controller labor shortages
2023: Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink
2024: FAA still short about 3,000 air traffic controllers, new federal numbers show
2025: Concerns about the FAA's air traffic control system date back decades
https://www.forbes.com/sites/suzannerowankelleher/2025/02/26...
Serious close calls have serious close calls have decreased over 20 years
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/airport-runway-incidents-ris...
The big ones like that JFK incident make the news but most don't.
I don't think it's really a partisan issue either. The FAA and especially the NTSB are pretty impartial and just care about the truth, what went wrong and how this can be avoided in the future.
Of course Trump makes it political by screaming DEI every time something happens, before there's even a preliminary investigation. But I wouldn't take that seriously. He does that with everything.