KVIG Informative

The country’s air traffic control system is running roughly 3,000 controllers short of its own staffing targets, and airports are starting to cap how many flights they’ll allow rather than pretend the shortage isn’t there.

The United States has about 25% fewer air traffic controllers today than it did in 1981, even as the number of flights using the system has grown roughly 10% since 2015, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in December 2025.

The Federal Aviation Administration employed roughly 11,000 certified professional controllers as of April 2026, against an internal staffing target of 12,563 the agency set in its 2026-2028 Workforce Plan — itself a reduction from the 14,633 controllers the FAA said it needed in a 2024 estimate. More than 40% of the FAA’s 290 terminal facilities are operating below their own staffing targets, and 19 of the 30 largest facilities, which handle most of the nation’s traffic, run below 85% of target.

The strain has forced formal flight caps rather than relying on delays alone. Chicago O’Hare has been capped at 2,708 scheduled operations a day from May 17 through October 24, 2026, a cut of nearly 15% from what airlines had planned. Newark Liberty has operated under a reduced hourly rate for an extended period, and the shortage concentrates hardest at the regional radar facilities managing New York and Southern California airspace.

The FAA’s new workforce plan calls for hiring thousands of controllers, including roughly 2,200 in fiscal 2026, but training a new hire to full certification can take more than two years depending on the facility, and washout rates remain high once trainees reach the busiest terminal radar facilities.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford told lawmakers in December 2025 that under the agency’s prior structure, staffing levels would not catch up to targets, describing the system as effectively designed to run short-staffed. The agency says newer scheduling tools and modernized training, including tower simulation systems that can cut certification time by up to 27%, will let it run safely with roughly 2,000 fewer controllers than earlier estimates required.

Aviation safety researchers say fatigue and workload strain from understaffing increase error rates, and congressional briefing materials from early 2026 documented rising loss-of-separation incidents and runway incursions at understaffed facilities, though no direct link to a specific accident has been established.

The agency is simultaneously trying to replace aging radar and communications infrastructure while running short-staffed — a modernization effort known as NextGen that has itself faced delays for more than a decade. Rebuilding the workforce and rebuilding the technology were always two different problems; 2026 is the year the FAA is finding out it doesn’t have the staff to do either one on schedule.