{"id":330326,"date":"2026-07-06T01:48:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T01:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/330326\/"},"modified":"2026-07-06T01:48:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-06T01:48:23","slug":"nashvilles-tower-is-short-25-air-traffic-controllers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/330326\/","title":{"rendered":"Nashville&#8217;s tower is short 25 air traffic controllers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nashville International Airport&#8217;s control tower has 27 certified air traffic controllers, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/text.npr.org\/nx-s1-5869367\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">NPR&#8217;s report on the U.S. air travel crunch<\/a> \u2014 the FAA&#8217;s target is 52. It&#8217;s one symptom of a national bottleneck: airlines fly more passengers than ever on fewer flights than 20 years ago, and TSA expects to screen over 18 million travelers during Fourth of July week alone. Nashville&#8217;s own passenger departures more than doubled between 2015 and 2025.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Congress has appropriated $12.5 billion toward air traffic control modernization, including an $875 million FAA contract for AI-assisted flight coordination software, but Chris Sununu, who heads the trade group Airlines for America, said the industry&#8217;s biggest threat is &#8220;our short-staffed and woefully antiquated air traffic control system.&#8221; Former acting FAA head Polly Trottenberg called the funding &#8220;a good down payment,&#8221; but not enough for &#8220;a system that has been chronically underinvested in for a decade and a half.&#8221; One traveler summed up flying this year in five words: &#8220;Air travel&#8217;s sucking more lately.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Previously:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nashville International Airport&#8217;s control tower has 27 certified air traffic controllers, according to NPR&#8217;s report on the U.S.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[25179,11687,7810,249,251,250,111938,115,107],"class_list":["post-330326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-air-traffic-control","tag-air-travel","tag-faa","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-nashville-international-airport","tag-news","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=330326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}