I have the lucky advantage of a father who's a retired controller and who is currently training new people at DFW TRACON. My husband and I went in for a tour and to meet with the training manager, who had emailed his contact on the selection board for the central region to give him my husband's name. The email response said, basically, he would keep an eye out for his name to come up, but since he was in PUBNAT8 instead of 7, things weren't good. According to him, they're still working through the list of veterans, and the slots have been filled through 2011. He said since we're in 8, his name probably won't even be looked at until late this year, at very best, since they still have to get through the stack of PUBNAT7's well-qualified applicants. (We're equally fortunate that he scored WQ. Sounds as though they're not even looking at Qs anymore.)
The training manager also told us that, at least in the central region, they're going to try to stop taking guys straight out of the academy and putting them in big facilities like DFW. The plan is to over-staff some of the smaller facilities, get the guys some experience, and then reward the ones who do well by bringing them over to the larger facilities once they have the skills. They're hoping to avoid having so many wash-outs that way.
My husband right now is considering signing up for 4 years in the Air Force as a controller to get the training and experience, and then reapply with a veterans preference and hope things have smoothed out a bit with the process at that point. At that point, controllers who went in the same time my dad did (post-strike) will be forced to retire and maybe there will be another push to hire. Plus, it sounds like we likely won't hear much for a few years no matter what.
Anyway... I felt like I learned a lot by talking to the training manager, so I just wanted to pass it along, for what it's worth.:dunno:
I think the ATC commitment in the Air Force is 6 years.
If it is in fact 4 years, he would need to make sure he's not 31 prior to that time. Also, I would say that he should be at least a year from his 31st b-day because as you're already experiencing, the hiring process is just too unpredictable.
I can just see that happening, too.
