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Vaughn College campus with air traffic observation deck.

NEW YORK, NY November 16, 2007 —Laguardia, Newark and Kennedy consistently have the most delays of any of the nation’s airports. Every hour, they each handle between 80 and 100 arriving and departing planes. All of that traffic is managed by air traffic controllers. With thousands of them nearing retirement age, the FAA has increased its hiring. WNYC’s Beth Fertig went to Queens to visit one of the few colleges in the nation that helps train future controllers.

REPORTER: The Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology is located just across the Grand Central Parkway from Laguardia airport. From the campus observation deck, students have a perfect view of airplanes landing and lining up to leave the runways. They also hear a direct feed from Laguardia’s control tower.

SALAWAY: You see right now an airplane landing on runway 22 as it clears the intersection, over where it intersects with runway 31, tower controllers clears someone for takeoff.

REPORTER: Brian Salaway is an air traffic controller at Laguardia who’s also an adjunct professor here at Vaughn.

SALAWAY: Tower controller just responded to the American Eagle on final, and eventually he’ll clear him to land.

REPORTER: Students at Vaughn earn associates and bachelors degrees in subjects like airport management or aviation maintenance. The college is also one of just 23 U-S schools chosen by the Federal Aviation Administration to participate in its Air Traffic Collegiate Training Initiative. As an instructor, Salaway prepares his students for the grueling demands of New York’s notoriously busy airports.

SALAWAY: You want to maximize the efficiency of the runway. We only have a couple of runways here. So we want to get departures up in the air as quickly as possible and as safely as possible I should say first. Our job, out of our training binders, is we ensure the safe, orderly expeditious flow of air traffic. Safety first, orderly second, and expeditiously third.

REPORTER: About 160 students are taking air traffic control classes – about 15 percent of the student body.

SALWAY: What is the rule I’m looking at here? We have crossing runways here this airplane has not crossed the intersection: STUDENT: He’s got to pass the intersection. SALWAY: What, Jeanette?

REPORTER: This class is learning about the rules of airplane separation by using model planes on a tabletop runway. Vaughn’s Aviation Chair, Domenic Proscia, says more students than ever are taking his classes because there are lots of job openings. Thousands of controllers were fired in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan after their union declared a strike. The ones who replaced them are now approaching mandatory retirement age.

PROSCIA: I think with the realization that the FAA is looking to hire 15,000 folks until the year 2016, students are recognizing that hey this is a place that I should get into.

REPORTER: Twenty-eight year old Knobbie Mohammed couldn’t agree more.

MOHAMMED: I – I thank God that I was able to get into it right now. Because it’s such a perfect time.

REPORTER: Mohammed says he first got excited about the career as an airplane passenger, when he sat in his seat listening to a radio channel with the pilot talking to the controllers. Air traffic controllers can make 90 thousand dollars after 5 years. First, they have to attend the FAA’s academy in Oklahoma City and then get placed in a control tower for certification.

MOHAMMED: Usually hiring takes about two years. I’m hearing of students who have been able to get hired in 6-8 months so that’s great, I have a family, I have a wife, 2 kids, so it’s helpful to know I can progress very quickly in this and be able to accomplish something that’s been a dream for a while.

REPORTER: But some air traffic controllers say the job isn’t what it used to be. For one thing, salaries for new hires were cut by a third after a contract dispute led the FAA to impose new work rules last year. Meanwhile, controllers say they’re under more pressure than ever because the skies are so crowded and so many of their colleagues are retiring. Barret Byrnes is the union representative for controllers at JFK International Airport. He claims a lot of new hires coming out of the academy get frustrated, and leave before their training period is over and they’re certified as full controllers.

BYRNES: It’s a very demanding position. Do you want to do this for the rest of your career? Do you want to get your brains kicked in on a regular basis, working too many airplanes and not enough air traffic controllers?

REPORTER: As an experienced controller, Byrnes says he winds up doing the work of two or three people on any given night. The FAA says JFK has a target staffing level of 33 air traffic controllers, and that it’s already exceeded that by having 39. But only 25 of them are fully certified for the most demanding tasks of managing takeoffs and landings. That’s why the controllers complain they’re overworked, a situation they say contributes to delays. The staffing numbers are similar at Newark and Laguardia.

The FAA, however, insists the delays are caused by the simple fact that more people are flying, not by a lack of staffing. The agency has hired 18-hundred new controllers in the last year to fill the ranks. Leo Prusak, district manager for the New York area’s control towers, says that proves the job is still very attractive.

PRUSAK: I grew up upstate NY in a town that is dirt poor. We didn’t have work. My parents were blue collar - my mother drove a bus and raised 5 kids. It’s not that complicated. We’re not making people under duress come and be air traffic controllers. We’re offering them an opportunity to have a great and exciting career in a business that is wonderful, it’s something I love myself.

REPORTER: It’s the allure of aviation, and the surge in hirings, that makes air traffic control so appealing to Vaughn College student Kimberly Arthur. The 23 year old says she’s wanted to get into the field ever since she took a helicopter ride with her uncle in her native Trinidad. She knows the industry is going through difficult times – but that hasn’t dimmed her enthusiasm.

ARTHUR: It’s gotten harder but it’s a chance for me to go in and make it better, and make the industry of air traffic control better, and encourage other people to do air traffic control. So we don’t have the air congestion and delays, and just in general to have it running, flowing smoothly.

REPORTER: If Kimberly Arthur and her fellow students get into the FAA academy, they’ll be on the front lines as the aviation industry grapples with new solutions to airport congestion. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.