And they're (mostly) all wrong.

It seems great progress has been made in getting the word out to the American public about how poorly the FAA Academy is doing at graduating its own students. This site was the only one reporting on the dismal failures of the academy well before this news broke, and we greatly appreciate everyone who forwarded this information downstream and got the word out.

Academy washout rates have greatly increased since this site was last updated in February 2017. Our expectations were that things would get better, but strangely, things have gotten much worse. After previously passing roughly 80% to 90% of classes at the FAA Academy in 2016, washout rates according to KSN -- the internal FAA website which lists graduation rates at the academy -- have taken a huge hit, with as many as 50% or more of entire classes of trainee air traffic control specialists facing immediate termination during one of their last scheduled days at the FAA Academy.

Theories are making their rounds online as to why the washout rates have increased. Seemingly nobody will publicly address the facts that have been published on this website for nearly 6 months concerning the conflicts of interest at play between FAA Academy supervisors, evaluators, instructors, and students. Nor do any of these theories address the disconnect between the FAA Academy's management under the Office of Finance and Management versus where controllers in the field actually work (and are desperately needed) in a separate branch called the Air Traffic Organization.

An equivalent comparison to the FAA's current arrangement for controller training is much like the FBI being dependent upon cadets graduating from a law enforcement academy run by the U.S. Treasury -- a situation which does not exist for obvious reasons. (For the record, the FBI runs its own academy in Quantico, VA. And no, they don't wash out their cadets without due process following one evaluation.)

Theories from the Internet

  1. "Nerves" cause trainees to fail evaluations."I passed the terminal class this year. ... The biggest thing that harms people the most is NERVES. They told us that and I didn't believe them at first but it is honestly true." - Charlie Papa 2, pointsixtyfive.com"I passed in terminal about 4 months ago. It's nerves. We passed 4 of 18 in terminal and the true reason is just nerves. We had so many talented people that let the nerves of evals and pressures get to them. People made mistakes and then it snowballed." - Bosox330, http://reddit.com/r/atc.

    Sure, we all know nerves cause people to fail all sorts of tests. However the incessant repetition of the term "nerves" among people who recently graduated from or claim to work at the FAA Academy suggests that this term is being very carelessly thrown around as an excuse for their unbelievably poor performance lately, and minions there are regurgitating the term merely because their jobs depend on them doing so -- not necessarily because it is the truth.

    If "nerves" were the cause of the recent FAA Academy washout rate spike, we should have seen similar effects in prior years. However in prior years, the FAA permitted its trainees to retake evaluations (then called Performance Verifications, or PVs) up to two times. If the FAA were concerned about trainees' nerves, eliminating those trainees' due process rights and subjecting them to sudden-death evaluations is certainly no way to quell them before evaluations.

  2. These damn kids don't know how to study."Had a sup just come back from a class down in OKC and he talked to a few instructors. Seems the trouble with the kids down there now is that none of them want to remember anything so the instructors are stuck trying to figure out ways to teach them how to memorize things." - wikodevo, pointsixtyfive.comPlease, spare me the "Millennials can't do anything" groaning. The FAA has been training under-31-year-olds since their dawn of time. (Age 31 is the federally-enforced cutoff for hiring new air traffic controllers.) If suddenly after 60+ years of training this age group they are failing, they need to go back to the drawing board and figure it out again. (Maybe they'll close the academy again, blame sequestration like 2013, but this time revamp everything in a way that is actually conducive to success rather than corruption. One can dream, right?)

    All of FAA's evaluations, at least in the tower program, are conducted in computerized simulators. Today's generation of under-31-year-olds should be able to handle those fancy multi-million-dollar machines like nobody's business. The fact that many trainees today cannot effectively communicate with a computerized voice in a simulator is simply reflective of the technological retardedness of that system -- not the trainees' ability to study what to say the the computer. "I didn’t have a problem with the computer understanding me; I did however have a problem understanding the computer robot voices. I had to sometimes say “say again” 3-4 times to understand the transmission." - SpeedoBandito23, http://reddit.com/r/atc.

    The FAA never used to make trainees' employment reliant upon their ability to communicate with a computerized voice recognition system. The FAA, in fact, used to staff humans to do the talking for the computer for the simple fact that the computer was known to be a deficient communicator. Trust me -- if Ford and GM can't get a car to properly understand "Call Mom," those multi-million-dollar simulators at the FAA Academy won't be able to properly understand "Number 2, traffic Cirrus two mile final, Runway Two Eight Right cleared to land." Anyone who thinks that voice recognition system is reliable enough to justify using on a test for continued federal employment is a fool.

  3. "If you can't pass terminal at the academy you have no business being a controller." - breakaway2000, pointsixtyfive.comThis was true circa 2013 when pass rates were virtually 100%. In the post-2013 FAA Academy, revamped after a 9-month closure due to "sequestration," this isn't true at all. All it takes is a brief one-on-one with a recent FAA Academy graduate to verify that many capable people are washed out because of systematic defects in the evaluations and with the simulators."I feel the low pass rate is due to not giving the students enough time in the sims, making the scenarios too difficult, and the PA grading is too harsh. First off, the entire time you’re at the academy for terminal is 3 months. For the first month you are in basics and the next month and a half or so you are in “initial tower cab training” which is just more bookwork. So for 2.5 months you are doing academics. That 2.5 months of work is only worth 10% of your final grade. The other 90% comes from 2 hours on the last two days before you graduate (four 30 min runs)." - SpeedoBandito23, http://reddit.com/r/atc.

You can check out the discussions here: Point Sixty Five #1 Point Sixty Five #2 Reddit ATC "My money's on trouble in academy land. Tin foil hat really, but I don't see why the tail end of a hiring wave would perform WAY worse than the rest. New crop of harsh/incompetent instructors maybe? Tougher scenarios? Tech issues? Besides issues training, shifting from well qualified to qualified applicants is the only theory anyone's posted that looks good to me." - DontCallMeShirley, http://pointsixtyfive.com.

Ours is, too. So much so that we created a site about it.