Originally Posted by
Timbo
It takes a lot longer to train up and replace 12,000 ATP pilots than it does to train up a 11 thousand ATC guys. Many of my college friends were controllers who went on strike, and a few month later, many of my furloughed American Airlines friends replaced them, with only a few weeks training, until they were recalled to AA 3 years later (1984).
Apparently it took ten years to get staffing back to normal.
Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (1968) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"In the wake of the strike and mass firings, the FAA was faced with the task of hiring and training enough controllers to replace those that had been fired, a hard problem to fix as, at the time, it took three years in normal conditions to train a new controller.They were replaced initially with nonparticipating controllers, supervisors, staff personnel, some nonrated personnel, and in some cases by controllers transferred temporarily from other facilities. Some military controllers were also used until replacements could be trained. The FAA had initially claimed that staffing levels would be restored within two years; however, it would take closer to ten years before the overall staffing levels returned to normal."