San Diego’s airport is dealing with a significant shortage of air traffic controllers, Axios San Diego reports.
This news comes as the Trump administration fired about 400 recently hired support staff employees at the Federal Aviation Administration over the weekend as part of the the mass terminations of federal workers.
Axios:
San Diego International Airport is fending with a 17.9% vacancy rate among air traffic controllers, per the most recent FAA data. … By the numbers: San Diego’s airport tower is five short of its FAA target of 28 air-traffic controllers.
In the larger, regional sense, it reports:
Southern California TRACON, which controls air traffic coming into and out of a 9,000 mile area, is 22 controllers short of its 232 FAA target, good for a 9.5% vacancy rate.
We’re reminded that “San Diego International is the country’s busiest single-runway airport, and just experienced its busiest year ever, with 25.24 million passengers traveling through the airport in 2024.”
Plus, “…Trump called for sweeping air traffic control overhauls, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy welcomed Elon Musk’s DOGE team to take a look under the hood.”
Some history:
Regional leaders in the early 2000s attempted to address San Diego International’s growth constraint, with a ballot measure to relocate the airport to a two-runway, 3,000-acre facility on a portion of Miramar’s 23,000 acre base. After three years and $17 million spent on the effort, 61.4% of voters rejected the proposal in 2006.
Published in the UT letters to the editor: The cause of the devastating plane accident at Reagan International Airport will be determined, but we in San Diego understand the risks of mixing different types of aircraft in the same airspace. This creates significant challenges for air traffic controllers, particularly in airports operating near or beyond capacity. At San Diego International Airport (SDIA), the past quarter saw 5,894 operations by air taxi, general aviation, and military aircraft, nearly 10 percent of the commercial operations, pushing the airport to 83 percent capacity. Reducing separation between aircraft is a strategy to handle higher traffic volumes, but it can strain the system and increase risks if not managed impeccably. Airports like SDIA become a pressure cooker during peak seasons, with controllers executing a delicate dance to keep everything running smoothly. We must balance efficiency and safety, considering when to halt the addition of new commercial flights until a safer resolution is achieved.