A college in Queens will play a big role in fighting the air traffic controller shortage. Here's how.
The Federal Aviation Administration announced Wednesday that Vaughn College will train some FAA controllers on campus as part of a new, nationwide program.
The small college in Queens is about to play a big role in fighting the air traffic controller shortage.
CBS News New York first reported last year that the plan was in the works and now it's official.
"The first one in the Northeast to train air traffic controllers"
Vaughn College sophomore Omeirys Romero, who is from the Bronx, dreams of becoming an air traffic controller for the FAA after she graduates. She practices frequently with a simulator on campus. If she does get hired, she will no longer have to move to the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City for three months of training, which had been a requirement for all new FAA controllers - until now.
"I can just stay at home and still get the same certification and the same process to study, and to actually be able to be in the tower one day. And also be able to be with the same professors that have been working with me for the past two years already," Romero said.
The FAA announced Wednesday that Vaughn will be the fifth college welcomed into a program allowing newly-hired graduates to train for those three months on campus rather than moving to Oklahoma. The idea is to streamline the training process and chip away at a concerning, nationwide controller shortage.
"The FAA academy located in Oklahoma City, where all air traffic controllers currently get their training, is limited in how many people they can put through that facility. And so this gives us as a country an opportunity to have locations in a lot of different places - us being the first one in the Northeast - to train air traffic controllers," Vaughn College President Sharon DeVivo said.
The folks at Vaughn are hoping to train the first batch of new controllers this September. The school hopes this will eventually improve the pipeline of New Yorkers working in New York's air traffic control centers as the FAA has struggled to recruit and retain controllers in New York's main air traffic control facility.
The new hires won't be fully certified until they complete years of additional training at whichever air traffic control center the FAA assigns them to.
"The training being localized will be as good, if not better"
Steven Fanno is a retired controller and current instructor at Vaughn. The school has specialized in aviation studies for decades.
"I think a lot of us in the retired ranks feel that the training being localized will be as good, if not better, than the training at the academy. More specific, more thorough and people wont get left behind," Fanno said.
"You've got Newark. You've got JFK. Lot of big facilities there. It's going to give people an opportunity to get that Oklahoma education - the FAA academy - right there in their backyard," FAA deputy vice president of safety and technology training Chris Wilbanks said.
The FAA still oversees the curriculum, but Vaughn instructors will do the teaching. The trainees, at least for now, will all be Vaughn graduates hired by the FAA.
