If You Are A Gamer, US Air Traffic Control Wants You To Apply Immediately

Amid a critical shortage of air traffic controllers, the US government has now reached out to gamers to fill the thousands of vacancies. The Federal Aviation Administration on Friday (Apr 10) released a new recruitment advertisement where it is explicitly calling for gamers to apply for the jobs when the hiring window opens next week. The ad showcases the Xbox One logo alongside the popular battle royale game, Fortnite. It also promotes a lucrative career path for gamers, noting that salaries can reach $155,000 (Rs 1.4 crore) after just three years of service.

"Are you up for the challenge? You have been training for this. Become an air traffic controller. It's not a game, it's a career," reads the text overlay in the ad video, which has garnered over 12,000 views on YouTube. "You'll keep millions of people safe every day and make a lot of money," it adds.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the new recruitment drive was aimed at a new demographic of young adults who may have cultivated the skills required to be an air traffic controller through gaming.

"To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt. This campaign's innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller," Duffy said in a news release.

Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a labour union that represents controllers, said the strategy of recruiting gamers to tackle the shortage was welcomed by the unions.

"Our union welcomes innovative approaches to expanding the candidate pool, including outreach to individuals with high-level aptitude skills such as gamers, so long as all pathways maintain the rigorous standards required of this safety-critical profession," Daniels said, as per BBC.

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US Federal Agencies And Gamers

Currently, the FAA has 11,000 controllers working for it, with 4,000 trainees in the pipeline. However, the agency needs thousands more to be fully staffed. The US government has struggled to fill the vacancies for more than a decade. Agency officials have blamed a combination of attrition, the length of time that it takes to train controllers, and the historically high washout rate as the reason for the lack of ATC personnel.

The FAA is not the only US government agency to target video gamers in recent years. The recruiters in the military and the Department of Homeland Security have welcomed the gamers for their hand-eye coordination, quick decision-making in complex environments and ability to remain focused on screens for hours on end.