Austin City Council member Vanessa Fuentes, who authored the measure, said the call to action includes several components, among them an FAA-approved air traffic controller academy in partnership with Austin Community College.
“We want to continue to ask and demand that the FAA take action, but also add a local solution,” Fuentes said in an interview with Community Impact. “Rather than pointing a finger, we are lending a hand, trying to address and help solve for the staffing shortages.”
If the city succeeds in establishing a certified air traffic controller program locally, it would be the first and only one of its kind in Texas.
A closer look
In October, an American Airlines Boeing 737 carrying 122 passengers and a Cessna 182 narrowly avoided a mid-air collision, flying past each other less than 350 feet apart, according to city documents.
However, this incident was only the most recent of five near misses at the Austin airport in the last two years.
While city and state leaders continue to advocate for improvements, it is the FAA—not local government—that is responsible for staffing air traffic control towers.
“Despite dangerously low levels of staffing and an apparent pattern of near-catastrophe, the FAA has failed to increase the number of air traffic controllers at [ABIA] and, in fact, the number of air traffic controllers has decreased during the past year,” the resolution states.
Staffing levels are currently only 53% to the target, according to data obtained by Community Impact through the Freedom of Information Act.
As of February, there are a total of 32 fully certified professional controllers and another nine in training. The control tower at ABIA is supposed to have 60 fully certified air traffic controllers, according to FAA targets.
In addition to public safety concerns, Fuentes noted that there have been multiple ground stops and delays as a result of insufficient tower staffing.
Within just the first half of 2025, the FAA has issued a combination of four separate ground stops or arrival restrictions, triggering widespread delays, diversions and cancellations nationwide.
Fuentes explained that when passengers are left sitting on the tarmac and told there’s a 30- to 45-minute delay due to issues at the Austin airport, what isn’t communicated is that the real cause is a shortage of air traffic controllers. As a result, travelers assume the problem lies with the airport itself, making it a less safe, less desirable destination.
Zooming out
Air traffic controller staffing is not unique to Austin, nor is it recent. Over the last five to 10 years, the FAA has reported a dwindling number of candidates to fill positions across the nation.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the problem can be traced back to a large-scale controller strike in 1981, by which the FAA began rapidly hiring replacements in 1982 and 1983. This created a large pool of controllers who are all becoming eligible for retirement at roughly the same time.
Compounding the growing need for controllers is the reality that qualifying for this highly specialized role involves a lengthy and rigorous process.
Becoming an air traffic controller requires meeting strict qualifications—from age and citizenship to passing medical, security, and skills assessments. Fewer than 10% of applicants meet all the criteria to be accepted into the FAA’s training program, according to FAA documents.
In addition, training and full certification can take two to four years to complete.
Items worth mentioning
In recent years, the FAA has announced an initiative intended to increase the pipeline of air traffic controllers.
In late 2024, the agency had hired 1,811 new air traffic controllers—the largest number of hires in nearly a decade, according to a news release.
Once certified, new hires will be assigned to more than 300 air traffic control towers nationwide under the agency’s oversight.
The takeaway
Fuentes said her resolution aims to create a mutually beneficial partnership between the federal agency and Austin’s local airport.
“We know that the FAA has an interest in expanding training capacity,” Fuentes said. “... This [resolution] will authorize the city manager to officially start those conversations, both with Austin Community College and with the FAA on building out a program here locally.”
She added that the measure also calls for stronger communication and collaboration with the FAA moving forward.
Coupled with the hope of increased staffing, the Austin airport received among the first deployments of the FAA’s new Surface Awareness Initiative system in July 2024, a “game changer for air traffic control,” according to a news release from ABIA.
The system gives air traffic controllers real-time, bird's-eye views of everything happening on the ground on the airport’s runways, taxiways and other parts of the airfield.
