Air traffic control towers will ‘never’ reach full staffing levels under current system, FAA chief says

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) chief told lawmakers Tuesday that U.S. air traffic control towers are unlikely to ever reach full staffing levels if the agency continues operating as it does now, acknowledging persistent shortages during a House aviation subcommittee hearing.

“The honest answer, sir, is, if we continue with business as usual, never,” Bryan Bedford said when Rep. Hank Johnson Jr., D-Ga., asked when air traffic control towers would be fully staffed.

“We’ll never catch up. The system is designed to be chronically understaffed,” the FAA chief added.

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Bedford explained that the FAA has been facing significant challenges in staffing air traffic control towers due to controller retirements, burnout and the agency’s retention problems.

He said the FAA must expand its training pipelines and invest more in developing new controllers to help alleviate the shortages.

Rep. Brad Knott, R-N.C., questioned Washington’s habit of treating more funding as the default solution, pointing to outdated FAA technology, including some systems that still rely on floppy disks.

“We built up the envy of the world without a centralized bureaucracy. And it seems from where I sit, sir, that sort of the bureaucratic systems that were written and implemented to prevent failure have all but enshrined failure,” said Knott. “When you’re still using floppy disks, that makes everybody less safe, that makes the agency less effective.”

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Rep. Laura Gillen, D-N.Y., said she saw floppy disks still in use during a recent visit to the FAA’s terminal radar approach control facility on Long Island, which manages traffic into New York’s major airports.

Bedford told lawmakers the FAA has committed by year-end more than $6 billion of the $12.5 billion it received under the “big, beautiful bill,” including investments in telecommunications infrastructure and new radar surveillance systems that will be deployed over the next two and a half years.