ATC #1 high paying job least schooling
 

This article i found on yahoo. I think it is BS myself. ATC his a VERY high pace high stress job. I think it is very misleading to accuse them of less education.

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OJT is schooling in my opinion.

I think the article was, technically, accurate . . . but misleading at the same time. Any facility that pays in the median 50% they mention for a newly certified controller has a significant washout rate for people with no experience. Consider a few years making between $50-$60 grand (or less) your education before trying to get to one that pays over $100,000 per year.

Times might be tough right now and i personally know a lot of people who have left the airlines to go to ATC. I thought about it myself as well but when it came down to it i thought to myself how i would feel in 10 years when i was clearing one of my friends to take off in a 777 and saying that could have been me, and thats how i made my choice. The money is good and yeah, you get to be home every day. But you work some wierd shifts and if you have flying in your blood, it may not be for you.

By the time you get to fly a "regional" 777 you friends will be in Florida collecting their retirement/pension ;)

Ha, yeah you might be right its always a calculated risk in this industry.

Like airlines closing shop, ATC is one determined president/congress away from closing up and being sold to Lockmart, China, or whatever. Bye bye pension. Thanks for stopping by.

Can't happen? Ask a friendly Flight Service person what happened Oct 1, 2005.

Besides, those ATC people are crazy anyway. Stay in that RJ at $20-$30/hr.

This job is tough the training and yes education is tougher. Minimal schooling of the liberal arts variety possibly.
When the controllers where replaced in the early eighties the way the government justified their argument that the controllers where not worth the money they where asking for was to throw down the lack of "education" required to get the job. This gave the public the impression that any high school grad could do the job, very far from the trueth.

I flew with a guy who was a supervisor down at Miami Ctr, doing his multi. I asked him about how stressful it gets, because I was interested in possibly pursuing the career. His reply...

"Any job has it's stressful times. Just check out the McDonald's cashier at lunch time. Same thing, morning departures, late morning arrivals, afternoon departures, and evening arrivals is when it usually gets busy."

Coming from the cockpit, I think any pilot would have an advantage from the previous knowledge, but can't get much less stressful than ATC. Especially when you hear those beeping noises getting faster and faster when ATC comes on the radio... then a pause... then you hear your call sign said in an inquisitive manner.

When I attended the ATC academy in Oklahoma City in 1988, they told you to look to each side... one of those guys won't be here at the end of 3 months.

With a 50% washout rate, and it didn't matter if you had a degree, or not, or had military ATC, or not (we had two Air Force ATC guys in my class... one made it, and went to Bay Approach, and the other washed out).

For entertainment, I composed a spreadsheet (ok, this is mega nerdy) of all my classmates, and any identifiable "features" that might provide a trend towards whether we would pass or fail. Important stuff, like smoking or not, beer or wine drinker, etc. No trends could be indentified when the final verdict came out.

Those of us in the top portion of our class (lucky me) had to go to a center. I didn't even really know what a center was. I had a private pilot certificate, and had never talked to a center. I wanted Orange County tower in SoCal. I got Oakland Center (ZOA) in lovely Fremont, after briefly considering ZLA in even less lovely Palmdale.

A few that scored very close to passing were offered Flight Service jobs. Five of us went to Fremont, and even though it had a 40% failure rate, only one failed the 3-4 year checkouts to become journeyman enroute radar controllers. The agency gave the one failure from our group a Flight Data position (mostly putting in international flight plans in the center).

One of my classmates went to ZFW, and I went on to SCT in San Diego, both after about 10 years at ZOA.

So at the end of your term in Oak city you don't get to choose whether or not you go to an airport or a center?

The faa choses for you?

How is the determination made?

If you go to an airport, does everyone start at flight data/clnc delivery on their journey to become departure/approach controllers?

I'm pretty sure that new controllers will not have as good of a future payscale as "legacy" controllers...Tony?

They are pretty much direct hiring into facilities these days. Take the AT-SAT exam and they are pretty much placing well qualified individuals into the facility of their choosing IF there is a spot. You are given a location before you even go to OKC. I took the AT-SAT for the heck of it....We'll see..

I don't think it's misleading at all. Right now the most formal education that the FAA is requiring applicants to have is a high school degree. Most high school grads in other job sectors will never see a payscale like that of an ATC, esp within only a few years on the job. Sure there are occasional success stories like dropout-self-made-millionaire types but most decent, well paying professions require a college or even more advanced degree. Even if it's not required, it's competitive to have one.

Same here.. I actually had an offer letter in my hand but when it came down to it I just couldnt see myself being happy doing that. I thought of myself in the future sitting up in the tower looking around at the planes and I knew that I would be wishing that I were in a plane instead. The salary and pension were incredibly tempting.. I wondered if I earned enough money to never worry about bills again and also have pension, could that security and peace of mind be enough to compensate for doing a job I don't enjoy... that was such a tough call but for me ultimately the answer was no.

I'd rather be in the cockpit making half that amount

who ever said controllers can't fly? I know a handful that fly contract corporate, instruct, one owns his own J3....Stick around with hopes of flying a 777 someday? seriously? RJ, 73, 777...it's all the same job guys...Is your ego that important you have to fly a 777 someday? your willing to starve to get there? Hope you look back in the end and say it was worth it...5 years in and three airframes later...a wife, a baby, no benies, no pension...I'm out! You can have my #!

The screening process before the class was hired was also not easy. So 50% still washed out.

In 1988, no, I didn't get to chose. I think now that they are assigned a specific facility before being hired.

As I stated above, the determination was based on our academy scores as to what facility type (enroute center, terminal, or flight service) you would be assigned. You could haggle a little bit within the region that you were hired into, which is why I could have gotten ZLA or ZOA.

Also, the academy is no longer a screening process, but training. Almost nobody washes out at the academy, therefore folks who would have been kicked to the street 20 years ago are now just sent on their agreed upon facility.

Historically, if you washed out at the academy, you were fired. If you washed out at a center, you were sent to a tower. If you wash out of a tower, you were sent to Flight Service. And if you washed out of FSS; probably the end of the road.



Most towers do not have a combined approach control (so-called "up/downs"), so I'll say that in general, no. You will start at clearance / flight data / ground control first, however.

Au contraire !!! Our union, NATCA, was able to turn that around. As of October 1, 2009, controllers are once again enjoying "legacy" benefits, and the "B scale" controllers will be ramped up in pay over several years.

I don't know if a new hire today will make what I did on my last day on their last day, but it should be similar. My contemporaries at ZOA have a base pay of about $170,000 now, and should have the highest base pay in the country due to the highest government locality pay.

But, as I warned; the past four years saw FSS contracted out, and guys with days to go to retirement were kicked to the street. Absolutely sickening. Then, the agency unilaterally imposed their own pay and work rules until this recent change. This change would not have happened without intervention from the president of the US.

So, like the airlines, bad stuff can happen at no fault of your own.

At ZOA, we had several airline guys (regional airlines were still just "commuters" then ;-) One, whose dad was seniority number 1 at TWA for a long time (John Maris), was hired after being furloughed right out of TWA new hire class (I think an FE in the B707?). He retired over ten years ago, after 25 years at ZOA. I'm sure he'd think it was a good plan.

We had another who was recalled by PanAm after 15 years at FAA. We went to the class, but came back to ATC. I don't think he completed ground school. That was about 1990 !!!! He also retired.

By the way, you don't have to "make a career out of it". If you're furloughed, go for it. When hiring turns around, start throwing out the apps. If you fail at ATC, there's no PRIA !!!!!

Ya, I almost forgot about the test you had to take to get the interview. I scored 90-ish something I think. It took about one year from application in summer 1987 until I was hired on in the fall of 1988.

They offered a September class, but I'd just bought a house literally days before, so I deferred until the Oct 5 class. I didn't know how important that could be for seniority then !!!

How long after getting a well qualified do people usually hear back?

Glad to see that the pay and benefits has been brought back up to speed. I have been pointing some young people toward this as a good profession, they are not pilots just level headed people that you can't rattle.

I know a guy that flew for ASA his last seven years controlling at Atlanta center who then retired from atc and went to netjets. Another is flying at Netjets and controlling as well.

i took the test as well for a backup possible second career, i love flying but id love it more if i could afford to do it on my own in a cub !

still rocking an approach down to mins in the 121 world is very satisfying though, tough choice. after taking that ad-sat i can see how fast and how stressful it gets !

How would be possible to fit in both schedules?

He said that he would always bid the midnight shift. As far as layovers with the airline, he said he could easily switch shifts at atc to make his trips work out. Never got old for him since he loved both jobs...