On Roblox, an online gaming platform beloved by Gen Z and Gen Alpha, the site’s 151.5 million daily active users can manage and direct pixelated air traffic through an air traffic control simulator. That’s a coincidence. What isn’t is that the federal government is recruiting this very demographic to monitor airspace in real life as it seeks to plug a decadeslong shortage in key airport staffing.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced in an X post this week that the administration has hired more than 2,000 air traffic controllers after an April campaign aimed at recruiting video gamers, meeting 94% of it’s hiring goal, with an additional 2,000 candidates in the pipeline.
