alphaone said:
I was thinking, maybe after college I would go become an ATC. However, I can't really find a good source as to how to go about that. So, how does one become an ATC? How much should they expect to make? How do they get assigned the facility they work at? It seems to be a very cool, awesome, stable career, and I am just looking for some info. Thanks everyone
Probably the best source of information you will find will be on
www.atccti.com. It's a website created by a CTI student, who is now a controller, and the site is completely devoted to the whole process of getting hired. There are people in every stage of the hire process that frequent that site - and trust me, it is definately a 'process' to get hired.
How to do it? Military or one of 13 CTI schools in the nation. However, with the serious mismanagement by the FAA -- lack of plannig for the massive amount of retiree's -- they will probably start 'off the streat' hiring within a few years.
Money? Prior to one month ago, if you were in a Center or TRACON (at a level 8-12) you could expect to be making 100K+ once you were signed off as a CPC. The sign off normally takes 2-5 years. However, our fearless leader of the FAA, Marion Blakey, was able to single handedly impose her desired contract upon the controllers union last month (kinda takes away the point of having a union don't ya think?) and as such created an "a" and "b" scale for controllers. She froze all pay for existing controllers, as well as restructured their pay scale, and also implemented a 35-45% pay reduction for all new hires from this point on -- ie -- the "b" scale. So now if your directing traffic at the NY TRACON as a new hire your going to be making significanlty less than your fellow controllers sitting both to your right and to your left who may have been hired as little as 6 months before you. So yeah, the pay is quite an issue here at the moment. Marion is not exactly 'well received' by the controllers of this great nation. Further, she has created a situation that will result in a mass retirement of current controllers who are at retirement age and really have no incentive to stick around. So here's the question, who is going to train all the new hires? That is, the 12,500 controllers the FAA is projected to hire over the next several years....
How do you get assigned to your facility? When you are in the hire process the FAA sends you a form for 'geographic preference.' You then select 3 regions you wish to work in -- each region normally encompasses 3-5 states, so you really could be any where. However, as of about 2 weeks ago the FAA sent out letters to everyone in the hire process asking them the '5 states in which they want to work.' Go over to
www.atccti.com, this is a big topic right now on the boards.
"Great career and really stable" -- yeah, that is why I switched from flying to ATC. However, the work environment in the FAA right now is absolutely horrible. By controllers it is known as the 'era of suck.' Will it change? Probably, once we get a new administrator. It's like every thing else in aviation, ups and downs.
Good luck
