WASHINGTON – Oklahoma’s entire congressional delegation, in a move led by Sen. James Lankford, joined on a letter sent to the Federal Aviation Administration Tuesday in support of the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City. The letter came a day after the FAA installed a new air traffic control tower training system at an airport in Austin,Texas.

Established in 1946 as a centralized training and logistics facility, the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center is home to the FAA Academy, which provides aviation-related training to students from across the country and the world.

“Centralized and standardized training is key to maintaining safety in the national airspace system, and the quality of training that occurs at the Academy cannot be replaced,” the letter to FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker read.

“We oppose any effort to duplicate elsewhere any training that occurs only at the FAA Academy at the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center.”

Facing a shortage of certified air traffic controllers, the National Airspace System Safety Review Team released a report in November detailing a “bottleneck” at the academy with 30% of air traffic control students failing to pass certification.

The report recommended the Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center increase hours of operation, hire more instructors and reduce outdated curriculum. The report also recommended that the FAA provide access to air traffic controller training at other facilities across the country.

With Boeing’s presence in and around Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City, Rep.Tom Cole said, it is important for the training to be centered in Oklahoma. Cole said the Oklahoma delegation is working closely with Whitaker on funding issues.

“There’s some efforts to move some of the training down to Texas, pushed by the Texas delegation,” said Cole, a Republican House member. “We certainly have a request from Boeing to weigh in as a delegation. We have quite an interest and are pretty consistently supportive of the FAA, and that matters too.”

On Monday, the FAA installed an air traffic control tower simulation system at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Austin, the first in the nation to receive the modernized training system. The FAA plans to install the new system in 95 facilities across the country by December 2025.

“At the end of the day, their job is to make sure (the training) is safe,” Cole said. “We don’t want to get in the way of that, but we want to also make sure that we don’t commercially disadvantage Boeing in ways that jeopardize the long-term involvement of Boeing in the Oklahoma Valley.”

The largest aerospace vendor in central Oklahoma, Boeing has been involved with Tinker Air Force Base since 1953, employing over 3,700 professionals. About 20% of Boeing’s employees are veterans, and collaborations with educational institutions and internship programs contribute to Boeing’s influence in the region.

Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication. For more stories by Gaylord News go to GaylordNews.net.