Air traffic controller careers

The FAA hires trainee air traffic controllers and places them at facilities across the United States. The eligibility and the pay below are from its hiring page, last updated on 21 April 2026, and its qualifications page, updated on 27 February 2025. The hiring page said that announcement was closed.

Civil air traffic control is split into three services. Aerodrome control is the runway, the taxiways, and the circuit. Approach control is the airspace around one or more airports. Area control is the en-route sectors between those terminal areas. A rating for one does not cover the others.

Civilian controllers are usually trained in two parts. The first is rating training, in a classroom and on a simulator, for one type of service. The second is training at the unit where they will work. The employer publishes the length. It is not one number for the profession.

In civil aviation the state issues the licence. The usual pattern is a licence, a rating for a type of service, and an endorsement for a unit. A rating on its own does not authorise every unit of that type. The names on the licence are the state's.

Count two stretches. One is selection and a place on a course. The other is the training itself, and it ends when a licence lets you work a position at a unit. Employers publish the second stretch. The figures below are from their own pages in 2025 and 2026.

An air traffic controller works a defined piece of the sky, or a defined piece of an aerodrome, for the time they are on that position. They do not fly the aircraft. They tell the pilot what is cleared, and they keep that flight separated from the others they are responsible for.