Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Details Efforts To Increase Air Traffic Controller Numbers

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During Monday’s press briefing at Newark Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about plans to increase number of air traffic controllers.

Transcript

00:00Secretary, can you, I have two questions. One is the fiber that got laid and is getting tested.

00:08When is that, when do you expect that to come online?

00:12So we, I don't want to over promise and under deliver. So I just, this, we're looking at it,

00:20but our hope is at the end of June, early July, we can, we can switch it over.

00:25Okay. And then that's, that's the line from the Philly TRACON to N90. And that was the problem

00:32line that we had. For radar or for telecom? For telecom. Okay. And then the air traffic

00:37controllers, you mentioned that there's many in training that they should be able to roll out

00:42over the next year. Can you give us a little more particulars on that? Do you expect all of those

00:46air traffic controllers that are getting trained for area C to be, you know, rolling out like a

00:52year today? Like how, how can you just give more detail on that? So we have, so we have 22

00:56controllers, six are on leave right now. Okay. So it leaves us with 16 controllers in the Philly

01:03TRACON. And we have 16, there's a lot of 16s in here, so don't be confused. We have 16 in training.

01:0914 of those are experienced controllers from other airspaces. They have to get trained up in this

01:16airspace. And so depending on where they're at in the training will depend on when they roll out of

01:22training and become certified controllers for this airspace. I believe, Chris, we have another six

01:27that just came in on top of the 16. So there's a total now of 22 controllers in training. And so

01:35it does take time, right? You want to make sure you have well-trained certified controllers controlling

01:41your airspace. And so, again, they won't come out all at the same time, but they'll roll out over the

01:47course of the next, uh, months, uh, up to a year. So you'll start to see, um, reduced stress

01:53on the controller front as we go from month to month. Yes.

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