Direct hires don’t bring enough numbers. That would still waste time and result in the termination of dozens of good candidates for other slower facilities. I think you’re blind to the fact that starting slow and gaining experience to move up to busier facilities works. Not just experience working traffic, but as an agency employee, as a BUE, how to work the slate book, dealing with bullshit from OS/OMs. The environment at busier facilities is NOT like most lower levels.
All in all, there is a reason the agency will not let people go direct to busy facilities, (Z’s are obviously different) kind of like how the Union and the agency won’t discuss a serious pay raise for changing times. We would quite literally have to change federal law to raise the statutory pay cap for that so a new pay schedule could be generated, since those at 12’s get paid the same as SES/4 star general officers.
There are reasons why the agency doesn’t make drastic changes like these. You guys need to understand the impact of something like that. Not to mention the CPCs who would quit because they’re tired of training shitty devs that barely made it past the sims.
For clarity, I am referring to OTS since that’s the bulk of the FAA’s hiring pool.
But I’ll say that the CTI streamlining was a good move, they get more classroom time that the academy and actual live training/experience.