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Comment by crysin | Hacker News Reader

Dumb question, and this is just me not Googling... but what do ATC do after their forced retirement at 56? That's still to young to retire, or will be for most people in the future and that's pretty late in someone's life. Are there natural progressions within the industry that they can move onto post being a controller or are they restarting from scratch in a new field?

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> but what do ATC do after their forced retirement at 56? That’s still to young to retire, or will be for most people in the future

ATC aren’t “most people”, they are federal employees with a federal pension, and not just normal federal pension because ATC service time is “special provision” time that allows retirement at 20 years service and age 50, or 25 years service at any age.

Retirement benefit is the (highest average salary over any 36 month window) * (34% + (1% * years of service beyond 20))

Plus an additional “FERS Supplement” payment post retirement to age 62.

From a sample size of one ATC I know. After they retire with a very generous pay package, they spend their time getting involved in local flying clubs, going on holiday and spending time with their families. They have enough money not to need to work again.

That's a good question and I'm wondering the same. Seems like a raw deal for air traffic controllers.

I think they get some type of pension/benefits, similar to how you can retire from the US military after 20 years of service, which is a more extreme case. (If you enlist at age 18, you can be fully retired at 38)

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