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Mysteries of Air Traffic Control with Greg Aretakis

• Jeff Borman and Matt Brown

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Flying through a perfect storm of staff shortages, archaic technology, DOGE crosshairs, and mounting safety concerns, America's air traffic control system stands at a critical crossroads. So, how can we fix all this? Master of the Air Greg Aretakis returns to guide us to the runway, providing a 101 course on how air traffic control works.

Speaker 1:

air traffic control has been in the news quite a bit late. It's even made its way to the presidential address and, to use a sports analogy, the best officiated games are the ones where the referees go unnoticed and if you're talking about them the next day, something probably went wrong. And I think there's a parallel in the travel universe with air traffic control. We want them to be there doing what they're doing and we probably don't want to think much about it. We just want it to be flawless.

Speaker 1:

I'm Jeff Gorman, joined as always by Matt Brown, and the reason we do this podcast is to understand more deeply how the travel world around us operates. It's such a vast ecosystem of industries and governance and policy and passion. Today we'd like to understand more about air traffic control, its current situation and how we got here To do this. We're doing what Greg would do. We called a friend. Greg is an industry expert and has the auspicious honor of being our very first repeat guest. Thankfully, he's led such an illustrious career that this shouldn't do too much to sully his reputation being back on our show. Greg, thank you very much, Welcome back.

Speaker 2:

Thanks Jeff, thanks Matt, good to see you guys, and a good topic. This is a topic that, if you have enough time, we'll dive in as deeply as we can. If you have enough time, we'll dive in as deeply as we can.

Speaker 3:

Let's set the table a little bit. The FAA and air traffic control has been in the news a lot recently. Obviously A midair collision in Arizona, a near miss at Midway, of course, the American Airlines Blackhawk collision with no survivors in DC and this has all just been in 2025. The number of fatal air accidents rose sharply in 2024, according to a major new safety report, and the research published by the International Air Transport Association acknowledges a significant increase versus a year even before that 2024, seven accidents were categorized as fatal by the organization. 2024, seven accidents were categorized as fatal by the organization and in total, they resulted in 244 deaths on board an aircraft, and there was just one fatal accident in 2023.

Speaker 3:

So, as we're looking at these kind of unfavorable year-on-year comparisons, it's room for pause, for sure. It's room for looking at an infrastructure that does need help. I think it's also taken into account that the FAA has been under attack. I think that's a fair way to say it. They've had their fair share of criticism and they have been bearing the brunt of the Doge assault on the federal government over the last six weeks. The Trump administration unveiled a plan on Thursday to supercharge the hiring process for air traffic controllers to address a long standing problem with keeping control tower staffed. And all of this is an attempt to just wrangle safety concerns on America's runways the way.

Speaker 1:

I understand this, which is just on the fringes, and why we're having this conversation, is that we've got problems in air traffic control, in kind of two camps. At least I think that's where the question goes here, Greg. It's both the staffing issues and the systems issues. Let's pick whichever one you want to start with. I think staffing makes sense because it's probably more personal and the longer bigger fix of what the infrastructure of systems are. We'll get to that. Why do we have the situation we have today?

Speaker 2:

Air traffic control writ large, viewed from afar, is still by far the safest way of getting from A to B. There is one incident every 800,000 flights. This is safe. If you think of North America, where we're talking about 200 fatalities in a year, there are what 25,000 automobile fatalities in a year. So, to frame things, it's a pretty safe industry and there are a lot of dedicated people out there. I can't tip my hat long enough. So there is a lot to unpack here. Let's talk about labor just at the beginning. So we have what 14,000 air traffic controllers and yet we're only staffed to about 70, 72, 75 percent of what the FAA would say is necessary in the vast array of centers and approach, controls and towers around the United States.

Speaker 3:

Greg, why do we have that gap?

Speaker 2:

Well, there's a lot of reasons, I think when the pandemic happened, everyone said, oh my gosh, no one's going to fly, this is the end of aviation. Airlines gave early retirement to pilots and mechanics and are still digging out from that. I think the FAA did kind of the same thing. I think the government let people go that they didn't need to let go. But let me talk about a couple of other kind of metrics.

Speaker 2:

To be an FAA controller, you have to be younger than 31. When you apply for the job you have to pass a test. Only about 10% of the people who apply are hired because of many things, including background tests, fbi, drug testing and so on and so forth. The process to be an air traffic controller because it's so important. It's crucially important for the safety of this industry. They go to school for six months in Oklahoma City at the FAA Academy. Now that is being broadened out and in fact the president's a fan of having some other places other than the FAA Academy do that training so more potentials can be sitting in chairs in classroom being taught.

Speaker 2:

There are two colleges in Oklahoma City that are currently letting that happen, but I wouldn't be surprised to see more. That makes a lot of sense. The second part is when you graduate from that, you go to where the need is but you are not allowed to touch the instruments. You sit next to an experienced air traffic controller for two years, two years of on the job training, getting the morning coffee, printing the morning reports, doing that kind of stuff, but not telling pilots what vector to be on, what climb out rate, what taxiway to be on, et cetera, et cetera. They don't do that for two years. Oh, you and I, we retire ostensibly at age 65, some people a little longer. By federal law, air traffic controllers have to retire at age 56.

Speaker 3:

Why is it so young? Do they just feel like your reflexes are? That feels like an outdated way of looking at it.

Speaker 2:

Maybe I mean this is all part of what has to be unbundled by Doge, by the White House, by the FAA and so on. Does that really need to be the case? We have airlines fighting right now to allow pilots to fly past their 65th birthday up to their 67th birthday. I haven't heard one peep about extending the age of air traffic controllers past the age of 56, but it gets worse. At age 50, they can retire If they have 20 years. With the FAA, when you're 50 years old, you can retire with full federal benefits. The average age of the average air traffic controller the 14,000 people we are talking about is 40 years old.

Speaker 2:

What happens in 10 years from now? What happened a couple of years ago in the Biden administration was someone looked at the actuarial math and said holy cow, let's get people in school right now. And they went out and started a hiring binge of about 1500 qualified students pass the test and all that jazz people a year, and there are now about 3,400 almost ready to sit at a desk to air traffic controllers. Now To Matt's question of where we go now. We need to expand the training base because the way that it works is the young people sit next to the old people and the old people say oh yeah, I saw this 12 years ago. This is what you do.

Speaker 3:

Greg, why do we need so many air traffic controllers?

Speaker 2:

Because the technology stinks, because of all the technology that becomes part of how we know where planes are, how fast they're going, what altitude they're at and how they're coming into airports. That technology doesn't work. I mean, all you got to look is at the testimony from the America Builds Conference that Congressman Graves held on Tuesday, and you see this everybody who testified gave a terrible indictment of the technology and, of course, it was mentioned that, well, we've got some of this stuff coming, but it'll be six to 10 years away. Oh, by the way, 10 years ago it was six to 10 years away. We have AI. We have a ton of technology that didn't exist 10 years ago. Why aren't these technology tools being deployed as part of an air traffic control fix? If you had that-.

Speaker 3:

Why do you think it's taken so long? Is this just that government moves slow?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's a lot of that. It's a lot of posturing by technology companies to get by technology companies to get sweet government contracts. Every four years we replace the top end of our government and then favoritism changes. I mean, that's just a reality, it's not an indictment. We haven't had the continuity of development.

Speaker 3:

Whatever technology would come in to replace the I think Jeff describes it as Atari Pong level of technology. When you look at what the systems they actually use, you're talking about something that has to be universally implemented over a lot of different airports. You have to have training on it, you have to work out all the bugs for it. Sure, you have to have all the pilots familiar with the new system at least on some level. So I'm sure there are enough blocks there that stop real tech evolution the same way that you would have in a private sector.

Speaker 2:

And just to put a point on that, they need to test, test, test, test. And I don't mean to throw a stone at Elon Musk, but the self-driving Tesla was a great idea until a lady got run over in Tempe, arizona, and it set the technology back five, six years because they had to figure out why the lady got run over and that the technology didn't prevent that from happening. They're going to have to do this here. This can't be a trial and error technological upgrade, because a mistake could kill 150 to 250 people, right? So that is where the long, long, long lead time comes from. So there's still multiple parts to the air traffic system and again, there are many pieces.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to just go to the two I've been talking about. There's the technology piece, and that's the part where a plane is flying at 28,000 feet, at whatever the speed is, at whatever the weather is, and the AI pops up and says I have a better idea. Why don't you slow down 50 knots and why don't you climb 1,500 feet? Right? They don't say that to the pilot, they say that to the air traffic controller, and the air traffic controller, who's looking at a whole lot of airplanes, says, yeah, that works, and pushes a button and that information is sent to the pilot of that airplane. When that technology is in place, it helps the air traffic control system. All the pilots need to know is what do I do now? And that is a communication from tower or center to airplane. That's plain and simple.

Speaker 1:

With air traffic growing at, I think, 6% compounding annually and our systems already maxed out, though at some point there has to be a tech solution that increases the efficiency of planes getting in and out, Otherwise the economic benefits and we can talk about that later but the economic benefits of travel will start to become seriously constrained.

Speaker 1:

You asked about, or we talked about, funding briefly, it seems to me, from what I read, there are two issues on the funding side. First is just the raw number $60, $70 billion is no small price tag for a solution of this size. Now, whether it really warrants that or whether that's the kind of number a contractor hands the government because they think they can get it out of them, I think that's a question. But the other part, my understanding, is that the way this is funded, congress has to continually approve the project and for a 10-year project that means a lot of shifts in Congress will take place during that time and there's no confidence that from one Congress to the next you can actually do a 10-year project or 15 by the time you train people on it. Did those two funding issues and congressional knots really resonate? Am I reading that properly?

Speaker 2:

not really resonate. Am I reading that properly? Yes, I think you are. I mean, certainly the devil is somewhat in the details, and not every member of Congress leaves every two years, but some subset do, and the presidency changes every four years, ostensibly. So the real issue here is going to be it's a big number, it can't be funded out of one budget. It's going to be funded and then more funding, and then more funding, and then more funding.

Speaker 2:

So if you think about an airport, planes approach the runway every three to five miles apart, right. And then they land, they taxi off and then maybe 90 seconds later or two minutes later, the next plane lands, and so on. There's got to be enough time to change things up if there's a snafu of some kind, right. So could you land planes closer together? And the answer is with the right technology and the right instantaneous change of information, you probably could. Now let's think about airports around the country. How much cement do we need to pour? How many more air traffic pieces of equipment do we need to install at an airport? How much higher do we have to make the control tower at the airport? The answer is if you spend money on air traffic, it might make sense to take budget money away from airports. Now the airport. People will scream about that, but the fact is, if you can use the cement more efficiently, you need less of it, and that's part of the situation.

Speaker 2:

We have a lot of airports in the United States that have none, or almost no service, and so one of the questions is if you have this kind of technology, does that open the door for airports? I just read Manassas, virginia, is now open for commercial business and they're going to add flights there, there and of course they should, because DC is absolutely full and Dulles has its own congestion issue and Manassas could be a third solution for this outward migration of Fairfax County out to places like Gainesville and Centerville, virginia. The populations in that area are growing the fastest and there is Manassas Airport just waiting. So if you have the right technology, can you open Manassas? How many more Manassases around the country are there? About 4,000.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the point is you only need one by one, by one. You don't need all 4,000 to be going, but you do need the technology for this increased kind of cacophony of flights, and that is where the technology comes in. The planes are all flying around Metro DC, and some of them are going to DCA, and some of them are going to BWI, and some of them are going to Dulles, and now some of them are going to Manassas, and you got to make sure that everyone stays in their lane and that this continues to be a fully safe system. Now, I said at the top, it's a very safe system and one of the reasons why things are getting crowded is because there's a measure of safety and concern that emanates from the FAA. I give them full kudos for that. The question to us is how do we keep growing travel, tourism and economic development in a world where airports are getting constrained, either people or technology?

Speaker 1:

I think your answer to that is first, it has to feel safe, and yes, it does. It actually is safe. But as soon as you have one accident or, in the recent months, a few, all of a sudden people fear that it's not going to be safe. They hear about it in the news, they're afraid to board a plane, and that's the first step to declining demand. The FAA and to all the credit you give through the I think it was the Government Accountability Office they did a study late last year at least they published it last year determining that 51 of the 138 systems that the air traffic controllers are using are unsustainably bad. 17 of them are so concerning and they don't think it'll last 10 years and there's no plan to do it.

Speaker 1:

Do you think, for what you just said, we want travel. It's a tenth of our total economy is powered by travel. We need people to feel safe and we need the traffic to be able to keep growing the way we want our economy to grow. Do you think the recent events have enough attention that the FAA, the GOA insert a dozen other acronyms will actually get together and make what airline enthusiasts and executives have known for decades that this needs upgraded. Do we stand a chance? Now? Is an accident the sad way to get there.

Speaker 2:

We, the three of us and many listeners that you have, we may or may not make a difference. Right, Media makes a big difference. So there's an accident in the Potomac River. There's an accident in Toronto, canada, by a Delta plane. There's an accident in North Philadelphia by a private jet I won't even go into that conversation, but there are plenty of small planes that have incidents and they all started making the news. So those newspapers or blogs or incidents, and they all started making the news. So those newspapers or blogs or MSN articles, they're all falling onto the front desks of the various members in Congress and the administrators in his office. So it's not falling on deaf ears.

Speaker 2:

And we get, you know, a squeaky wheel, gets the Jeff that we are going to move into a world where there's a little bit more passion, commitment to making this go, and in a world that's highly politicized and may even be polarized. I don't think this is that. I think that if the government can get their arms around what to do and the dilemma isn't whether this is right or not We've got a president that wants to give taxes back to the people, wants to tax people less, wants a smaller federal budget and in that vein, we're saying let's spend a whole lot of money on the air traffic system and let's commit to it for the next decade. And I that vein, we're saying let's spend a whole lot of money on the air traffic system and let's commit to it for the next decade. And I promise you, once it's committed to nothing's going to stop it.

Speaker 2:

Nothing's going to stop it, because these articles are still going to be in the paper and everyone's going to have to be responsive to it.

Speaker 3:

I mean. All this begs the question can air traffic control even afford to be contracted Like? Doesn't it need to grow to meet the demand of tourism's growth and travel's growth in the US?

Speaker 1:

I was looking at a study by ACI and it goes back to 2017, so we're going to do some extrapolation to it.

Speaker 1:

But where I want to take this is then we've hinted at the impact on the US economy that this all has. In 2017, 500 commercial airports in the US, being measured, supported 11.5 million jobs, $428 billion in annual payroll and an economic output of $1.4 trillion. These airports accounted for more than 7% of US GDP. So if we take those 2017 numbers and do some very rough, high-level math and say, as of today, that $1.4 is probably a $2 trillion economic impact, what would a 20% reduction in air traffic mean? Well, if it's $2 trillion today, then that's a $400 billion shave. That's if 7% of GDP, that means we're lumping 2% of GDP. In a year like this and for the foreseeable future, gdp is going to grow at about 2.5% a year, we could be basically erasing, with a 20% cut in air traffic, nearly all the GDP growth of an entire year. If it's 33% shave in economic benefit from travel, then you could actually turn growth into recession by harnessing this very solvable economic engine.

Speaker 2:

And it's uneven. So I'll pile on to what you just said, because we can argue about the details, but what you said is generally true. So let's pretend you live in Dallas. Let's pretend DFW shrinks is obligated to shrink, because of air traffic control limitations, by 10%. Do you think the DFW to LaGuardia flights are going to be reduced? Or how about the DFW to O'Hare flights? Or DFW to DCA flights, or Dulles or Charlotte or the other places that are important? No, San Angelo is going to lose flights. Abilene is going to lose flights. Victoria, Texas, is going to lose flights. Lake Charles, Louisiana, is going to lose flights. That's where the flights are going to come out of. As the airlines are told, you have to pull X number of flights. So who gets the short end of this economic stick? The secondary communities, you know, and to quote that always works.

Speaker 3:

Nice, call out too, greg of Lake Charles, my hometown. Have you? Well, I mean, you've been everywhere. Have you been? Have you actually been to Lake Charles?

Speaker 2:

I can tell you about my favorite restaurant, pats of Henderson Another conversation for another day. But but if you think about that and I I will quote from Ghostbusters every one of those people is a card carrying voter, is a card-carrying voter, right? So when you stop and think about the economic impact of this, you are taking those communities, you are politicizing their voting. They're going to call their congressmen, they're going to call their senators, they're going to raise all kinds of heck and there's going to be unbelievable turmoil, because DFW didn't lose anything. The flights to the big cities all got saved. It's those little cities, for whom those flights are really economic lifelines, that are going to be damaged, and that really is the situation. I mean we have to think about this very broadly and ask ourselves this isn't a homogeneous plane, this is an uneven plane that we're talking about.

Speaker 3:

It's time for the mystery question, greg. This weekend you get a call from the White House. It's the president. Greg, love your style, love your career, go Packers. I want you to be the next head of the FAA. A do you take the job? B? What's your first act as head of the agency?

Speaker 2:

Boy? That's a great question, matt. You know what I care so much about this industry, about our industry, the travel, tourism, economic development engine that is focused, at least partially, on aviation. So I probably would take the job. First thing I'd do is I'd call four or five really smart people that I know or know of and I'd say this isn't going to get fixed alone. Second thing I would say is we have to change some rules here, and we're going to get callback from the unions, we're going to get pressure by companies, but we have got to speed up the way that we train people. So I'll give you a parable.

Speaker 2:

So, after 2019, we had no pilots, right? Remember 2018, 2019, pilot shortage. Everyone's renegotiating labor agreements. We're paying pilots $175,000 a year and up just to sit in a seat. And where are we going to get all the pilots? Well, look, today there are flight schools all over the country, more than ever. United owns some, even. But we have flight schools. They're all associated with universities and we have changed the rules so that if you graduate from a university that's associated with a flight school, you don't need 1,500 hours. You can do it in 1,250 hours, right? So we have figured out how to craft something that's acceptable to Congress, that's acceptable to the FAA and which generates more pilots than we were looking at as a run rate back then. I go back to FAA. We have got to make those same kind of changes. The quicker answer if technology is indeed six to 10 years away, then the quicker solution is people. We've got to get more people and that means training them faster and getting them in positions Now.

Speaker 2:

I've spent a lot of time talking about air traffic controllers and how important they are. There's a whole other class of workers I didn't mention and that is the systems specialists, which are also very underfunded relative to the budget. They are dedicated to making sure this stuff works and keeps working, to making sure this stuff works and keeps working and even if these systems are old and decrepit, if you can make that happen the least amount of time, you're going to get the best possible answer At the current pay rates. It should be an attractive job and particularly rules. If we tell air traffic controllers listen. You come in when you're 31, you retire when you're 51, and you get a federal pension. That ought to be enough. And you're making $150,000 a year. That ought to be enough to get them to want to apply for the job, and that is we need.

Speaker 2:

As a smart guy once said to me, you got to fill the top of the funnel before you can see what comes out the bottom of it. That's where I would start, matt. I would start with that. I think I don't know enough about the technology. If I did take the job, that'd be the first thing I'd look at is who's doing this right?

Speaker 1:

I would have just asked you whether you think Devante adams is going to be a packer next year. That was my mystery question. Matt, you know he controls the show and the content. What do I know?

Speaker 2:

hey, I'm a lifetime kansas city chiefs fan. I think he's going to go to kansas city. How about that?

Speaker 3:

wow, you heard it here first everybody. Great gary talk. Is you Master of the air?

Speaker 2:

ladies and gentlemen, Thanks, guys, great fun. You know, this is an industry that evolves and continues to evolve, and as it does, we're going to need more and more of people who are passionate about it, raising their voices and saying this is what I think we have to do next.

Speaker 1:

I think we're at a pivotal moment here with air traffic control because, to your point earlier, media is crucial. Media tends to only care about this stuff when there's something bad.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know. So there's two kinds of media. Right, I read I mean, I've been up since 5.15 this morning, central Time. I have read five aviation publications that all come out overnight every single day. I read them all. Does the Washington Post read them? Does the New York Times read them? La Times, denver Post no, no, no, no one reads this stuff. Maybe, and only maybe, the Dallas newspaper. The Dallas newspaper seems to really have their thumb on aviation.

Speaker 2:

What's going to drive this is the wall street journal needs to run articles about how we get aviation to not be the thing we talk about the most. Like any good program, if we get a air traffic systems right, it'll never be mentioned because it'll just work. And I think the New York Times needs to say, of the things that are on our list world peace and economic stability and all that stuff the thing we should be able to check off and put at the side is the air traffic system. And if they do that, they'll write multiple articles. And those multiple articles go to the congressmen and the senators and the administrators, and that's how that all works. I mean, I can call, I know some members, I could call them up and you know what I know some members. I could call them up and you know what, if it's not on their today list.

Speaker 2:

You know, I talked to Jerry Moran once, a senator from Kansas, and he was telling me he has a private plane and he had the largest, one of the largest congressional districts in square miles or whatever in the country, so he would fly to these various places. And he was telling me, you know people in Dodge City and places like that Hayes, they need this air service. And he said, when I fly into one of these towns to talk to the voters, air service always comes up. Now, when I go to St Louis, does air service come up? Probably not. How about Chicago? Maybe, maybe not right, but in these littler places air service is huge. They are thinking about it all the time. And it always struck me that what Moran said made great sense. You know that if you're in a small town, it is literally your umbilical cord to the economy.