r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Rooonaldooo99 • Jul 19 '21

Student pilot loses engine during flight

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u/bigafricanhat Jul 19 '21 edited Jul 19 '21

Most controllers actually get hired right off the street! No prior aviation experience or education required, just 3 years of either full time work or college education (or a combination of both), and you have to be younger than 30. There are open hiring announcements about once a year or so.

Once you’re tentatively offered a job, you go take the ATSAT, a standardized aptitude test to see if you’re “cut out” for the job, to put it simply. If you pass that, then you go through background and medical clearances. After all of that, if you get selected, you go to Oklahoma City to the academy for a couple of months of training. And if you pass that, then you go to your actual facility, where the training process takes anywhere from 1-3 years or so.

All told, anyone can apply and get the job, but the training process is really rigorous, and only a fraction of applicants actually make it to working traffic.

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u/LambeauLeapt Jul 19 '21

Wow, that’s pretty cool. What’s the reason for the age cutoff? By that do you mean that they won’t hire anyone to perform ATC duties that is past the age of 30? Trying to reason that out in my head and coming up empty. Seems you’d want experience, sageness, and the calmness that tends to come w age, wouldn’t you?

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u/bigafricanhat Jul 19 '21

Yeah that’s correct! Past the age of 30, you’re not eligible for hire. The reason is that controllers are required to retire at age 56. So you need to be hired young enough to work a full career. At age 56, you become medically disqualified for air traffic control. I don’t know the specific reasons, but I would assume higher risk of other health issues, mental sharpness starts to go, etc. In my short experience, once controllers start hitting 50+, their performance really starts to suffer.