The Federal Aviation Administration just beat the high score.
The agency hired more than 2,000 air traffic controllers this year after a campaign targeting gamers — and has already hit 94% of its recruitment goal, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy announced.
The impressive hiring spree came after the FAA urged gamers to put their skills at “speedrunning” to good use keeping America’s skies safe.
“We’re building the strongest, sharpest workforce in aviation history,” Duffy wrote in a Facebook post celebrating the new batch of gamers-turned-public servants.
Hardcore gamers have “demonstrated high cognitive functions,” like multitasking, spatial awareness and problem-solving skills, the FAA said when it launched the campaign in April.
“You’ve been training for this,” a promo video declared.
The hiring surge may turn things around for an agency with its health bar running low.
The FAA has struggled to fully staff traffic control towers since pandemic-era mass layoffs — with the shortage coinciding with high rates of accidents and near-misses on airport runaways.
In March, an Air Canada flight crashed into a firetruck on the runway at LaGuardia Airport in the Big Apple, killing the jet’s two pilots.
Investigators are probing whether an air traffic controller briefly stepped away to answer an emergency phone call just before the deadly collision.
In another incident, one air traffic controller had been doing the job of two people when an American Airlines plane collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter last year, according to FAA documents obtained by The New York Times.
Meanwhile, research shows that skills on virtual battlefields may really translate to keeping the skies safe.
A 2006 study suggested gamers were better at tracking multiple objects at once, and a 2024 study backed those findings and also found they had better “attentional control.”
Meanwhile, there are more gamers than ever: The FAA said more than 200 million Americans regularly play video games, which make more money than the film and music industries combined, according to PwC.
“With only about 25 percent of controllers holding a traditional college degree, this effort is focused on reaching talented young people pursuing alternative career paths,” the FAA wrote of its gamer blitz.
The current most-played games include military shooter Counter-Strike 2, real-time strategy game League of Legends, and Grand Theft Auto, which lets players fly planes of their own — if they steal them from the runway.
