New air traffic academy died in Congress despite dire need for more staff

Oklahoma City is the proud home to the only air traffic controller academy in the nation. And despite decades of warnings about dangerously understaffed control towers, the state’s delegation in Washington says that’s how it should remain. Last year, a U.S. Senate committee approved a bipartisan plan to build a second academy to address the long-standing shortage of air traffic controllers, adding it to a bill to fund the Federal Aviation Administration. But the new academy was later nixed amid opposition from Oklahoma’s members of Congress, who said the money would be better spent bolstering the existing facility. The disappearing academy is just a small piece of a larger mosaic of inaction and delay that has hampered the FAA’s ability to improve air traffic safety at America’s airports. Problems with understaffed towers, difficulty recruiting and training, and outdated electronics systems have been documented for years. The pushback against efforts to create a second air traffic controller academy, whose creation was supported by the FAA, is an example of the conflicting agendas the Trump administration and Congress must navigate as they search for answers to the long-standing problems. The failings of the nation’s air safety system came into tragic focus when an Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines regional jet collided Jan. 29 over the Potomac River in Washington, killing 67 people. An FAA preliminary report found that staffing in the Reagan National Airport control tower was “not normal” on the evening of the crash. The Washington Post has since reported that close calls, frequent cockpit alerts and internal safety concerns about potential collision “hotspots” have provided the FAA with abundant evidence of risk of collisions.<br/>