President Trump, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, and the Federal Aviation Administration have a plan to help solve the ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers across many of America’s airports. The solution? Gamers, baby.
On Friday, the FAA announced a new recruitment campaign that will target the “next generation of air traffic controllers,” which will include gamers. The FAA also released a new video ad that includes footage of Fortnite and Rocket League and asks gamers if they are “ready for the challenge” before suggesting that they have already “been training” to be an air traffic controller by playing video games for hours and hours each day.
According to a recent study, the United States currently has 25 percent fewer air traffic controllers in 2026 than it did in 1981. Yet these controllers are expected to manage and direct three times the amount of air traffic that controllers had to deal with back then. This shortage has been a problem even before Trump took office in 2024, but has gotten worse due to continued cuts to staff and funding. To help solve this problem, Trump, Duffy, and the FAA are going to prioritize reaching out to gamers instead of relying on more traditional options, like college fairs.
The FAA also claims that feedback from exit interviews points to gaming as “an influence on [candidates’] ability to think quickly, stay focused, and manage complexity.”
The New York Times reports that when the Trump administration polled 250 new air traffic controllers, all but two were self-described gamers. As pointed out by the Times, Joe Biden’s administration also tried to recruit gamers as part of a larger push to solve the shortage, but with this effort, Trump’s admin seems far more invested in bringing in gamers.
“To reach the next generation of air traffic controllers, we need to adapt,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement. “This campaign’s innovative communication style and focus on gaming taps into a growing demographic of young adults who have many of the hard skills it takes to be a successful controller.”
This is just one more example of President Trump and the U.S. government using video games in official operations. We’ve seen a lot of video game-themed propaganda from Trump’s team, including direct references to Pokémon, Halo, and Call of Duty.
