Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy Addresses Air Traffic Controller Shortage Following Airport Chaos

During Monday’s press briefing at Newark Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy spoke about the ongoing air traffic controller shortage.

Transcript

00:00In regard to controllers, so that's been a big topic of conversation.

00:06You all know that we're 3,000 controllers short across the country right now.

00:11And that has been seen probably to the biggest extent at the Philly TRACON, which services the Newark Airport.

00:20And so just some background numbers.

00:23There's 22 controllers at Philly.

00:25There's five supervisors.

00:27Six of those 22 controllers are on leave right now.

00:32So there's only 16 controllers that work at the Philly TRACON.

00:36However, there are 16 controllers who are training right now at the Philly TRACON for this airspace.

00:45And most of them are experienced controllers.

00:50And so on a rolling basis, over the next year, we're going to have more controllers come online into the Philly TRACON.

00:58In addition, we just brought in another six trainees into the Philly TRACON to also train up.

01:06So the problem we're seeing with controllers, it can't be fixed overnight.

01:10It takes time to train up on this airspace.

01:12But we've addressed the problem by bringing more controllers to train up in the Philly TRACON that, again, controls Newark here.

01:22And over the course of the next months, you're going to see improvements in this airport, in this airspace.

01:30And, again, day one, we have the airport.

01:34You're going to see improvements, again, in the telecom.

01:37And then you're going to see improvements with the staffing issues with regard to controllers.