Air Traffic Control Specialist Pay?

Question

I have been offered a job by the FAA as an Air Traffic Control specialist at Milwaukee's international airport. The starting salary is 39,000 a year. What can I expect to make after one year?

Answer 1

It all depends.  You pay is based on years of service and how many positions you've been checked out on (learned).  After one year though its 99% how many positions you've been checked out on.  After so many positions you get a pay bump until you can do them all.  Just how many positions it takes to get a pay bump depends on the facility and how long each takes also varies place to place.

Milwaukee is a level 9 ATC facility which means (and you have to add locality pay adjustment to all this, no clue what it is there but add 13% to my numbers for a ball park figure) after you are 25% trained you'll make roughly 40,000, after 50% you'll make about 47,000 and at 75% it'll be 53,00 and once you fully train it will be 60,000 increasing with years of service up to around 85,000 or so.  

Being an up down facility (both a tower cab and radar approach control) You'll probably hit 50% in a year (pure wild guess here) and take another year to year and a half for the full certification using a conservative estimate.  

So to answer your question in a needlessly technical mostly guessing way I'd say a touch over 50K after a year wouldn't be unreasonable.  

I'd say it'd be possibly to cut those times nearly in half though, but again, just a somewhat educated guess.