Congress examines how to address aviation workforce shortages

More people are flying again but staffing shortages in the aviation industry are making it harder to keep up with demand.

“Culture is the biggest barrier to women in aviation - it’s the hardest to change,” said Joanne “Jo” Damato, National Business Aviation Association.

This is something Jo Damato knows personally. She wanted to be a pilot growing up.

“Because of my gender, I was not permitted to fly all of the flight school’s airplanes. Because of my gender,” said Damato.

During a congressional hearing, Damato emphasized the need to diversify the aviation workforce to include more women and minorities.

She believes the new FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 will help alleviate some barriers. The law creates a new Women in Aviation Advisory Committee at the Department of Transportation aimed at improving recruitment.

“We need to make improvements to attract women and minorities to aviation to show them more examples of see it, be it,” said Damato. “Give them mentoring opportunities to understand the resources they can take advantage of especially funding being one of them.”

Damato also believes there should be more access to information about aviation careers.

“We need a one-stop shop national website to be the destination and central source of information for pursuing a career in aviation,” she said.

The new bill takes effect amid major staffing shortages in roles you don’t always notice when flying - such as aviation maintenance technicians.

Union leaders say these workers operate and maintain thousands of systems used for air traffic controllers.

And when there aren’t enough of them on duty, your trip could be impacted.

“The consequences of insufficient technician staffing manifested itself in increased restoration times during an outage or air traffic delays. It also causes inadequate shift coverage for technicians which means we don’t have the right person available to resolve a crisis when it occurs,” said Dave Spero, national president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists, AFL-CIO.

Some parts of the aviation industry aren’t experiencing staffing shortfalls.

Airlines for America, which represents most of the major US carriers, said in a statement that passenger and cargo airlines are experiencing the largest workforce in more than 20 years. It has more than 800,000 workers.

Full statement from Airlines for America:

U.S. passenger and cargo airlines employ their largest workforce in more than 20 years, more than 800,000 workers.

More people are flying than ever before, and U.S. airlines have been hiring aggressively across the industry – pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, etc. – for a couple of years to accommodate the increasing demand. Airlines have been implementing new programs to recruit and initiatives to retain the workforce, and U.S. airlines are paying record-high wages.

However, the ATC staffing shortage is directly impacting operations across the system. At this time of record travel demand, U.S. airlines cut back their schedules in congested areas to accommodate the ATC shortage at the expense of travelers who are seeing fewer flight options in those markets. We have been sounding the alarm on the shortage of air traffic controllers for more than a year.

The DOT Inspector General’s June 2023 report reinforced our view saying that the FAA has made “limited efforts to ensure adequate controller staffing at critical air traffic control facilities” and the agency “lacks a plan” to address this critical issue. Last year, the FAA netted just six new controllers while needing nearly 3000. The FAA’s system of hiring and training is fundamentally broken if it takes this long to hire and train controllers.

A4A has been supporting efforts such as the FAA Collegiate Training Initiative (CTI) program that allows prospective controllers while they are in college, allowing them to begin their on-the-job training in actual control towers once they graduate and were pleased when Secretary Buttigieg and the FAA announced their support for the revival of the program.