Ted Cruz Asks Official About Austin Airport Being 27 Controllers Short Of FAA's Recommendation

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During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke about Austin-Bergstrom International Airport's controller shortages.

Transcript

00:00Thank you. One final question, and we're going to wrap up.

00:03Airspace around Austin-Bergstrom International Airport has been impacted by a shortage of air traffic controllers assigned to that facility.

00:11The FAA bill included several provisions intended to improve air traffic controller staffing,

00:17and yet my staff recently received a report that Austin-Bergstrom Airport has only 33 air traffic controllers,

00:23while the FAA recommends that it have a total of 60 controllers.

00:28I'm concerned about the impact that this will have on Texas airspace.

00:32Mr. McIntosh, how is the FAA air traffic organization working to fix air traffic control staffing issues across the country,

00:41including specifically at Austin-Bergstrom Airport?

00:44Thank you for the question, Senator Cruz, and as you can probably tell, Austin is near and dear to my heart.

00:50I know that I spoke a lot about how we're fixing the broader issue of fixing the controller staffing that we have

00:57through supercharged hiring that Mr. Duffy has started.

01:03To answer your question, the FAA, along with our NACA partners, were proactive in increasing the numbers at Austin.

01:13The CPC numbers at Austin was 42, and to your point, we realized that the traffic was growing.

01:22So we proactively raised their numbers to 60, which is their new CRWG numbers, well ahead the implementation.

01:30So when you say 33 out of 42, that doesn't sound so bad.

01:3533 out of 60 sounds terrible.

01:37And that is something where I want to gauge our growth in CPCs versus percentages,

01:41because I think that is where we have to bridge that gap.

01:44But by proactively changing or increasing that number, Senator, what that allowed us to do was drive more trainees into that facility.

01:57And that was the goal.

01:58We've actually got a vote closing on the floor, so I thank you for that answer.

02:01But I want to ask you to make it a priority to make sure that the air traffic controllers are there in Austin.

02:08It is a priority, sir.

02:09I want to thank each of the witnesses for your testimony.

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