Response from: John (Check me out!)

The problem is, the numbers for these salaries are all off now... The FAA cut pay for air traffic controllers by 30% in September of 2006. Go see http://faaimposedpayrules.natca.net/paybands.htm and understand that only the most senior controllers in the most complex facilities will make more than 100k in base pay now. As a controller myself, the current pay is simply not worth it to perform the job.

Response from: Jimmie (Check me out!)

I bought into this in 2005 when I gave up another lucrative career and earned a degree I was told would be necesary to get this job. Today, I am tens of thousands of dollars poorer, while the FAA has cut the pay dramatically and eliminated the need for a degree to get hired (you can imagine my rage.) Before you jump on this bandwagon, consider that these high figures are inflated by a very senior work force, working in the highest cost-of-living areas in the country. If $40 thousand a year in New York City sounds newsworthy, by all means, apply.

Response from: jay (Check me out!)

Might be a job to consider if ATCS ever get a contract, are given the "right" to strike or, protection for their jobs as Title V used to give. See faafollies.com for more detailed info.

Response from: Paul Cox (Check me out!)

I've been an air traffic controller for over 17 years. I routinely tell people asking about it or considering it "don't do it". I wouldn't take this job again for what I make NOW, let alone the new pay scales (which are not yet reflected in the Forbes article's numbers- those numbers came from the Department of Labor from previous years and don't show the 30%+ pay cuts that the FAA implemented.) The hours suck, years of working weekends and evenings and overnight shifts play havoc with family life, you can't get a day off unless it's scheduled months in advance as vacation time, and the FAA believes that controllers- working in dark radar rooms or control towers segregated from the public eye, guarded by armed security people- need a dress code to do their jobs better. Which brings me to the only redeeming part of being a controller- the job itself. We're a weird breed; even those of us who hate our employer (a majority of us these days) and can't stand the BS that comes with working for the FAA tend to love the actual job. Plugging your headset in and moving metal around the sky, jets pointed at each other with closure rates of over a thousand miles an hour, hundreds of lives at stake if you say "left" instead of "right" and don't catch your own error- for whatever reason, the job itself can be an awesome rush and a ton of fun. And yet... thanks to the FAA's (and Bush Administration's) war on its own employees and on unions, I cannot in good conscience tell anyone to take this job. You won't make over a hundred grand for years (controller trainees start out at under 9 bucks an hour for several months) and even if you are lucky enough to be placed in a higher-level facility (almost two-thirds of the facilities in the nation have pay scales that top out around 85 thousand now- and that's after decades of work) the odds of getting through the rigorous training program are quite low. Nope. Plugging in and working traffic? Good gig. Working for the FAA for what they pay and put you through? Not worth it, not even at $150K a year, which you'll never make. The only reason most of us stay is that we're just a few years from retirement and can walk away with a healthy pension. We've sank this much time in; might as well finish it off now.