The FAA has not fully implemented recommendations from the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) related to the Controller Training Contract (CTC) that is part of a plan to train new air traffic controllers. According to the OIG report, the FAA needs to hire more than 11,000 new controllers through Fiscal Year 2021 to replace upcoming retirements. 

The FAA in 2008 awarded a 10-year Air Traffic Control Optimum Training Solution (ATCOTS) contract to Raytheon. In 2010 the OIG identified problems with that contract and issued 10 recommendations, seven of which have been closed. The CTC is a successor to ATCOTS, and according to the OIG, the FAA did not resolve all of the recommendations before awarding the CTC. 

According to the report, “While FAA addressed weaknesses we found with contract administration practices and oversight, it has not made sufficient progress to implement our recommendations on defining training requirements and validating training costs. These recommendations were designed to improve FAA’s ability to develop a comprehensive understanding of its training needs that could have been used to create a more reliable estimate of the Agency’s training costs before it awarded CTC. However, because FAA awarded CTC without fully addressing these recommendations, it may encounter many of the same issues that compromised the success of the ATCOTS contract.” The OIG said that the FAA is working “towards providing our office with the necessary information needed for closure of the remaining recommendations from our 2013 report.”

The open recommendations include:

• “Create a training plan that clearly defines all air traffic controller training requirements, including proficiency training and training for new systems. The plan should also specify the training requirements to be performed by FAA certified professional controllers and those to be performed by the contractor.
• “Develop a plan to assess internal resources and verify that controllers will be available to teach training at each facility.
• “Perform an integrated baseline review to (a) identify the training requirements that should be included in the budget baseline, (b) identify the risks for maintaining the budget and plans for adequately mitigating those risks and (c) determine whether resources are sufficient for completing the work.”