Air Traffic Controllers
Basic air control, aircraft emergency procedures, launch procedures, and pilot mission briefings provide relevant experience for civilian aircraft control.
How to prepare: Have an FAA recruiter assess your existing qualifications, certification or facility-rating records, and documented post-certification traffic-separation experience to identify the appropriate hiring route. FAA entry-level applicants must be under 31 and have one year of progressively responsible work, a bachelor's degree, or combined post-secondary education and work totaling one year; the 2026 experienced-controller notice instead sets a maximum original-appointment age of 35, subject to its prior-civilian-appointment provisions, and requires 52 consecutive weeks of full-time active traffic separation after certification or facility rating within five years at a qualifying FAA, DOD, National Guard, or FAA-contract facility, with neither pre-certification military training nor education substituting for that experience.
What the civilian work involves
- Inform pilots about nearby planes or potentially hazardous conditions, such as weather, speed and direction of wind, or visibility problems.
- Issue landing and take-off authorizations or instructions.
- Provide flight path changes or directions to emergency landing fields for pilots traveling in bad weather or in emergency situations.