Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Friday announced a record hiring effort for air traffic controllers.

“In just 13 HOURS: 8,004 Americans applied to join our controller ranks — that’s over 10 applications EVERY MINUTE! EVEN BETTER, 7,252 applicants are qualified! This is now the FASTEST application pace in AMERICAN HISTORY for Air Traffic Controllers,” Duffy said.

“Did you know… the @FAANews has been recruiting controllers since 1958 — 67 YEARS AGO? Today interest in joining has never been HIGHER. We’re just getting started! Applications are still open,” he continued.

Semafor explained further:

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Friday that it makes a lot of sense to hire gamers to address a shortage of air traffic controllers.

“If you think just what these gamers are doing on screens, and they’re talking and there’s a lot of things going on — they’re used to that. And that’s actually what you’re doing in a tower,” Duffy said at Semafor World Economy in Washington, DC.

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The Transportation Department announced a week ago that it would begin a recruitment campaign targeting gamers, releasing a promotional video urging them to “level up” by joining the department.

Duffy noted on Friday that 6,000 people had applied since the application window opened at midnight that day, with the portal closing upon reaching 8,000 applicants.

“We’ve had a flood of young people coming in that want to be air traffic controllers,” he said, adding, “They have to be qualified. We have to go through an assessment process. But this has been wildly successful.”

“Watch this… YOU can be the future of air traffic control. It’s not a GAME, its a CAREER. Applications open April 17th at Midnight,” Duffy said last week.

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The FAA has scrambled to hire and keep on enough air traffic controllers for decades. Duffy said in November that the amount of air traffic controllers retiring daily had tripled amid the government shutdown, which left federal workers without paychecks for more than a month.

“This is going to live on in air travel, well beyond the time frame that this government opens back up,” Duffy said in November.

In his 2027 budget proposal, Trump requested $481 million to help the FAA with an air traffic controller hiring surge as a part of his continued push to “supercharge” controller recruitment and retention.

Leading up to his November 2024 win, future Trump administration officials polled about 250 air traffic academy graduates, only three of which reported not being gamers, Duffy told Talcott. The hiring campaign is the most recent effort by the Trump administration to fill staffing gaps in the air travel industry.

“You may think I’m crazy. Like, gamers for air traffic controllers?” Duffy said. “This came about, we polled 250 random students at our academy and only three of them were not gamers. Like, huh, there must be a correlation between gaming and people wanting to become air traffic controllers. So we’ve leaned into that community.”

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