Aims Community College Creates Fast-Track Program for Air Traffic Controllers

Aims Community College Creates Fast-Track Program for Air Traffic Controllers

This is being done to deal with the shortage, so it’s great news. We need more of these people.

The Colorado Sun reports:

Amid air traffic controller shortage, this Colorado college is fast-tracking the next generation

As a child, Aiden Rowe followed his well-traveled family through countless airports, to the cumulative effect of cultivating an affinity for aviation — though he lacked any specific focus beyond the certainty that he had absolutely no interest in becoming a pilot.

But during a seventh-grade career research project, he discovered a flight-adjacent interest: air traffic control. The concept had instant appeal for the way it lined up with one of his strengths — multitasking — and offered the dual enticements of providing a public service while solving a pressurized, ever-evolving riddle.

“That was something that appealed to me, when it might be a major red flag for others with the high stakes, the mind puzzle aspect of it,” Rowe says. “It was perfect. It’s like the golden egg.”

Today, the 20-year-old from Cañon City stands to end the semester as the first student at Aims Community College to graduate from a newly enhanced air traffic control program. The Federal Aviation Administration recently approved a beefed-up curriculum designed to fast-track candidates into a job so in-demand that the agency estimates it will fill nearly 7,000 positions over the next three years.

Already, Aims was one of only about 30 schools across the country offering an approved basic air traffic curriculum (Metropolitan State University of Denver also offers one within its aviation and aerospace department). But now, Aims’ Windsor campus has also become part of the first wave of institutions cleared to offer the enhanced training that allows graduates to skip the traditional course at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City and move directly to airport tower or en route facilities for the final phase of training.

On the air traffic side, the program helps address a national hiring crisis. On the student side, it offers a cost-effective pathway toward a well-paying career. A two-year associate degree figures to cost from about $13,000 to $17,000 in tuition for in-state students — including lab fees to access the high-tech simulators — to qualify for a job that offers starting annual pay of more than $50,000 as a trainee to an industry median of more than $144,000, according to 2024 Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

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