“They were already security cleared, medical cleared, psychologically evaluated,” said a controller at a major high-altitude center in the Midwest, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Some were at the academy. Others had start dates in hand. And they just said, ‘I can’t do this.’”

The controller said trainees were forced to make impossible financial calculations while unpaid, frequently relying on personal loans, credit cards, or ride-share work to stay afloat. Many simply walked away.

“People were driving Uber, doing ride-share, trying to survive,” the controller said. “Others didn’t have access to zero-interest loans, so they quit. You can’t ask someone at the very beginning of their career to gamble like that.”

Those firsthand accounts were confirmed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

During a Dec. 17, 2025, hearing before the Senate aviation subcommittee, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency lost roughly 400 to 500 air traffic controller trainees during the shutdown, despite efforts to keep training operations running.

“We lost, I don’t know, 4-, 500 of our trainees that just sort of gave up during the lapse,” Bedford told lawmakers.

The FAA secured funding to keep its Oklahoma City training academy open, an unprecedented step during a government shutdown, but Bedford said fears about going weeks without pay ultimately drove many recruits away.

“Even though we kept the school open, I think the thought of not being paid was enough to frighten them away,” he said.

Controllers say the losses are especially damaging because trainees represent one of the most fragile points in workforce development. By the time applicants reach the academy or receive offers, the FAA has already invested months of work and significant resources in background checks, medical clearances, and psychological evaluations.

“That’s not recruitment anymore,” the Midwest controller said. “That’s retention. And once you lose people at that stage, you don’t replace them quickly.”

A recent Government Accountability Office report found that the FAA lacks clear performance goals to measure the effectiveness of its air traffic controller hiring, training, and placement processes, limiting the agency’s ability to identify and correct weaknesses in the pipeline. The report noted that the controller hiring and certification process can take between two and six years, with significant attrition occurring at multiple stages, including medical screening, academy instruction, and on-the-job training.

The FAA’s own air traffic controller workforce plan underscores how difficult those losses are to absorb. The agency projects losing nearly 6,900 controllers through 2028 due to retirements, resignations, transfers, and training washouts, even without disruptions like a government shutdown. Workforce officials have repeatedly warned that short-term shocks can have long-term consequences in a system where hiring and certification take years.

A second air traffic controller in the South, who also spoke to the Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity, said the scale of the departures has heightened concern about the long-term health of the training system.

“It’s hard enough to get that many people through the program under normal circumstances,” the controller said. “But when you hear about hundreds just up and quitting, it’s really bad news.”

Data underscore the challenge. Roughly 30% to 35% of air traffic control trainees fail to make it through the FAA’s Oklahoma City training academy. Even after graduation, additional recruits drop out once they report to their assigned facilities, where certification can take years.

According to the workforce plan, the FAA is attempting to offset those losses by hiring roughly 8,900 new controllers between 2025 and 2028, gradually increasing annual hiring targets. The plan also calls for streamlining the hiring process, expanding simulator-based training, and placing academy graduates directly into facilities with the most acute staffing shortages. Even under those assumptions, FAA officials acknowledge that staffing gains materialize slowly due to the length and difficulty of training.

At a November 2025 hearing, Nick Daniels, president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, warned lawmakers that the shutdown had already begun driving trainees out of the system.

“They started resigning, saying, ‘I can’t afford to move hundreds, if not thousands, of miles for a career that’s not paying me, and I have no idea when,’” Daniels said.

While the shutdown has ended, controllers say its effects continue to reverberate through a workforce already strained by mandatory overtime. 

The GAO report warned that persistent staffing shortages have forced the FAA to rely heavily on overtime at many facilities, a practice that the agency itself has identified as contributing to employee fatigue and retention challenges.

That strain has been compounded by controversy over the FAA’s decision to award $10,000 bonuses to a small group of controllers and technicians for perfect attendance during the shutdown.

The bonuses went to 776 employees, excluding nearly 20,000 other essential workers. Controllers say the policy penalized employees who took leave for illness, family emergencies, funerals, or preapproved vacations.

More troubling, the Midwest controller said, is the signal the bonus structure sends in a safety-critical profession.

“I don’t want to be alarmist,” the controller said. “I don’t think staffing by itself is making things unsafe, because when staffing gets too low, they put mitigations in place. They cancel flights. They delay flights. They don’t just tell you to work more airplanes.”

The controller said safety risks arise when financial incentives and public messaging discourage controllers from using sick leave.

“What worries me is when you start threatening controllers for using sick leave, and then you offer $10,000 bonuses if you don’t take a single minute of leave,” the controller said. “Now you’re incentivizing people to come to work when they probably shouldn’t.”

In air traffic control, the controller said, sick leave is not limited to physical illness but is a core safety tool in a profession that demands constant focus.

“If I’m sick, if my head’s not right, if I’ve got something personal going on that’s distracting me, it’s my responsibility to not be at work,” the controller said. “This is an extremely safety-sensitive job.”

The controller warned that combining attendance bonuses with public threats over sick leave undermines safety culture.

“It’s the opposite of what safety culture is supposed to be,” the controller said. “You’re supposed to encourage people to come to work fit for duty, and if they’re not, stay home. We’ll cover it. Scaring people into coming to work no matter what is not good.”

FAA officials say staffing levels have inched upward, with about 10,700 certified controllers currently employed and roughly 1,000 more trainees moving through training than a year ago. Bedford acknowledged, however, that it takes years for trainees to become fully certified.

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For controllers on the floor, that means the loss of hundreds of future controllers during a single shutdown will be felt well into the future.

“These weren’t people who failed out,” the Midwest controller said. “They didn’t leave because they couldn’t do the job. They left because the system showed them it couldn’t provide basic stability.”

The Washington Examiner reached out to the Department of Transportation for comment.