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Air traffic controllers have been in the news a lot lately. A spate of airplane crashes and near misses have highlighted the ongoing shortage of air traffic workers, leading more Americans to question the safety of air travel. The shortage, as well as aging computer systems, have also led to massive flight disruptions at airports across the country, particularly at Newark Liberty International Airport. The staffing shortage is also likely at the center of an investigation of a deadly crash between a commercial plane and an Army helicopter over Washington, D.C., in January 2025. One reason for the air traffic controller shortage relates to the demands of the job: The training to become a controller is extremely intense, and the Federal Aviation Administration wants only highly qualified personnel to fill those seats, which has made it difficult for what has been the sole training center in the U.S., located in Oklahoma City, to churn out enough qualified graduates each year. As scholars who study and teach tomorrows aviation professionals, we are working to be part of the solution. Our program at Ohio State University is applying to join over two dozen other schools in an effort to train air traffic controllers and help alleviate the shortage. Air traffic controller school Air traffic control training todayoverseen by the FAAremains as intense as its ever been. In fact, about 30% of students fail to make it from their first day of training at the FAA Academy in Oklahoma City to the status of a certified professional air traffic controller. The academy currently trains the majority of the air traffic controllers in the U.S. Before someone is accepted into the training program, they must meet several qualifications. That includes being a U.S. citizen under the age of 31 and speaking English clearly enough to be understood over the radio. The low recruitment age is because controllers currently have a mandatory retirement age of 56 (with some exceptions) and the FAA wants them to work for at least 25 years in the job. They must also pass a medical exam and security investigation. And they must pass the air traffic controller specialists skills assessment battery, which measures an applicants spatial awareness and decision-making abilities. Candidates, additionally, must have three years of general work experience, or a combination of postsecondary education and work experience totaling at least three years. This alone is no easy feat. Fewer than 10% of applicants meet those initial requirements and are accepted into training. Intense training Once applicants meet the initial qualifications, they begin a strenuous training process. This begins with several weeks of classroom instruction and several months of simulator training. There are several types of simulators, and a student is assigned to a simulator based on the type of facility for which they will be hired, which depends on a trainees preference and where controllers are needed. There are two main types of air traffic facilities: control towers and radar. Anyone who has flown on a plane has likely seen a control tower near the runways, with 360 degrees of tall glass windows to monitor the skies nearby. Controllers there mainly look outside to direct aircraft but also use radar to monitor the airspace and assist aircraft in taking off and landing safely. Radar facilities, on the other hand, monitor aircraft solely through the use of information depicted on a screen. This includes aircraft flying just outside the vicinity of a major airport or when theyre at higher altitudes and crisscrossing the skies above the U.S. The controllers ensure they dont fly too close to one another as they follow their flight paths between airports. If the candidates make it through the first stage, which takes about six months and extensive testing to meet standards, they will be sent to their respective facilities. Once there, they again go to the classroom, learning the details of the airspace they will be working in. There are more assessments and chances to wash out and have to leave the program. Finally, the candidates are paired with an experienced controller who conducts on-the-job training to control real aircraft. This process may take an additional year or more. It depends on the complexity of the airspace and the amount of aircraft traffic at the site. Increasing the employment pipeline But no matter how good the training is, if there arent enough graduates, thats a problem for managing the increasingly crowded skies. The FAA is currently facing a deficit of about 3,000 controllers, and unveiled a plan in May 2025 to increase hiring and boost retention. In addition, Congress is mulling spending billions of dollars to update the FAAs aging systems and hire more air traffic controllers. Other plans include paying retention bonuses and allowing more controllers to work beyond the age of 56. That retirement age was put in place in the 1970s on the assumption that cognition for most people begins to decline around then, although reserch shows that age alone is not necessarily a predictor of cognitive abilities. But we believe that aviation programs and universities can play an important role fixing the shortage by providing FAA Academy-level training. Currently, 32 universities including the Florida Institute of Technology and Arizona State University partner with the FAA in its collegiate training initiative to provide basic air traffic control training, which gives graduates automatic entry into the FAA Academy and allows them to skip five weeks of coursework. The institution where we work, Ohio State University, is currently working on becoming the 33rd this summer and plans to offer an undergraduate major in aviation with specialization in air traffic control. This helps, but an enhanced version of this program, announced in October 2024, allows graduates of a select few of those universities to skip the FAA Academy altogether and go straight to a control tower or radar facility once theyve passed all the extensive tests. These schools must match or exceed the level of rigor in their training with the FAA Academy itself. At the end of the program, students are required to pass an evaluation by an FAA-approved evaluator to ensure that the student graduating from the program meets the same standards as all FAA Academy graduates and is prepared to go to their assigned facility for further training. So far, five schools, including the University of North Dakota, have joined this program and are currently training air traffic controllers. We intend to join this group in the near future. Allowing colleges and universities to start the training process while students are still in school should accelerate the pace at which new controllers enter the workforce, alleviate the shortage, and make the skies over the U.S. as safe as they can be. Melanie Dickman is a lecturer in aviation studies at the Ohio State University. Brian Strzempkowski is an assistant director at the Center for Aviation Studies at the Ohio State University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Streetwear used to be about rebellion, community, and self-expression but now it’s walking down luxury runways with $2,000 price tags. Fast Company hit the streets of New York at the iconic Jeff Staple store launch to ask real streetwear fans: Is streetwear still streetwear? Is the culture still alive? Or has luxury killed the vibe?
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Violent tornado outbreaks, like the storms that tore through parts of St. Louis and London, Kentucky, on May 16, have made 2025 seem like an especially active, deadly and destructive year for tornadoes.The U.S. has had more reported tornadoes than normalmore than 960 as of May 22, according to the National Weather Services preliminary count.Thats well above the national average of around 660 tornadoes reported by that point over the past 15 years, and its similar to 2024the second-most-active year over that same period.The National Weather Service tracks reported tornadoes based on local storm reports, allowing for comparisons throughout the year. The red line shows 2025 through May 22. [Image: NOAA National Storm Prediction Center]Im an atmospheric scientist who studies natural hazards. What stands out about 2025 so far isnt just the number of tornadoes, but how Tornado Alley has encompassed just about everything east of the Rockies, and how tornado season is becoming all year.Why has 2025 been so active?The high tornado count in 2025 has a lot to do with the weather in March, which broke records with 299 reported tornadoesfar exceeding the average of 80 for that month over the past three decades.A deadly tornado hit London, Kentucky, on May 16, 2025, just a few weeks after another tornado outbreak in the state. [Photo: Allison Joyce/AFP/Getty Images]Marchs numbers were driven by two large tornado outbreaks: About 115 tornadoes swept across more than a dozen states March 14 to 16, stretching from Arkansas to Pennsylvania; and 145 tornadoes hit March 31 to April 1, primarily in a swath from Arkansas to Iowa and eastward. The 2025 numbers are preliminary pending final analyses.While meteorologists dont know for sure why March was so active, there were a couple of ingredients that favor tornadoes: First, in March the climate was in a weak La Nia pattern, which is associated with a wavier and stormier jet stream and, often, with more U.S. tornadoes. Second, the waters of the Gulf were much warmer than normal, which feeds moister air inland to fuel severe thunderstorms. By April and May, however, those ingredients had faded. The weak La Nia ended and the Gulf waters were closer to normal.April and May also produced tornado outbreaks, but the preliminary count over most of this period, since the March 31 to April 1 outbreak, has actually been close to the average, though things could still change.What has stood out in April and May is persistence: The jet stream has remained wavy, bringing with it the normal ebb and flow of stormy low-pressure weather systems mixed with sunny high-pressure systems. In May alone, tornadoes were reported in Colorado, Minnesota, Delaware, Florida, and just about every state in between.Years with fewer tornadoes often have calm periods of a couple of weeks or longer when a sunny high-pressure system is parked over the central U.S. However, the U.S. didnt really get one of those calm periods in spring 2025.Tornado Alley shifts eastwardThe locations of these storms have also been notable: The 2025 tornadoes through May have been widespread but clustered near the lower and central Mississippi Valley, stretching from Illinois to Mississippi.Thats well to the east of traditional Tornado Alley, typically seen as stretching from Texas through Nebraska, and farther east than normal. April through May is still peak season for the Mississippi Valley, though it is usually on the eastern edge of activity rather than at the epicenter. The normal seasonal cycle of tornadoes moves inland from near the Gulf Coast in winter to the upper Midwest and Great Plains by summer.Where local forecast centers reported tornadoes in 2025, through May 22 (data is preliminary, pending final analysis) [Image: NOAA Storm Prediction Center]Over the past few decades, the U.S. has seen a broad shift in tornadoes in three ways: to the east, earlier in the year, and clustered into larger outbreaks.Winter tornadoes have become more frequent over the eastern U.S., from the southeast, dubbed Dixie Alley for its tornado activity in recent years, to the Midwest, particularly Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana.Meanwhile, there has been a steady and stark decline in tornadoes in the traditional tornado season and region: spring and summer in general, especially across the Great Plains.It may come as a surprise that the U.S. has actually seen a decrease in overall U.S. tornado activity over the past several decades, especially for intense tornadoes categorized as EF2 and above. There have been fewer days with a tornado. However, those tornado days have been producing more tornadoes. These trends may have stabilized over the past decade.Deadlier tornadoesThis eastward shift is likely making tornadoes deadlier.Tornadoes in the Southeastern U.S. are more likely to strike overnight, when people are asleep and cannot quickly protect themselves, which makes these events dramatically more dangerous. The tornado that hit London, Kentucky, struck after 11 p.m. Many of the victims were older than 65.The shift toward more winter tornadoes has also left people more vulnerable. Since they may not expect tornadoes at that time of year, they are likely to be less prepared. Tornado detection and forecasting is rapidly improving and has saved thousands of lives over the past 50-plus years, but forecasts can save lives only if people are able to receive them.Average number of tornadoes by month, 2000 to 2024 [Image: NOAA]This shift in tornadoes to the east and earlier in the year is very similar to how scientists expect severe thunderstorms to change as the world warms. However, researchers dont know whether the overall downward trend in tornadoes is driven by warming or will continue into the future. Field campaigns studying how tornadoes form may help us better answer this question.Remember that it only takes oneFor safety, its time to stop focusing on spring as tornado season and the Great Plains as Tornado Alley.Tornado Alley is really all of the U.S. east of the Rockies and west of the Appalachians for most of the year. The farther south you live, the longer your tornado season lasts.Forecasters say it every year for hurricanes, and we badly need to start saying it for tornadoes too: It only takes one to make it a bad season for you or your community. Just ask the residents of London, Kentucky; St. Louis; Plevna and Grinnell, Kansas; and McNairy County, Tennessee.Listen to your local meteorologists so you will know when your region is facing a tornado risk. And if you hear sirens or are under a tornado warning, immediately go to your safe space. A tornado may already be on the ground, and you may have only seconds to protect yourself.Daniel Chavas is an associate professor of atmospheric science at Purdue University.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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