DENISON, TX - Air traffic controllers are some of the highest paid civil servants in the country. Now one academy in Grayson County is working to help disabled vets get the training they need to land some of these high paying jobs.

"Rolling down the road it was about noon, and a bomb went off on the passenger side of the vehicle," Norman Forbes says.

He was injured in Iraq while serving in the Army, but today he is training to become an air traffic controller at the Link Simulation and Air Traffic Control Academy at the North Texas Regional Airport.

A Division of L3 Communications, a company that primarily operates as a defense contractor, the school is now actively seeking out disabled veterans to fill its classes.

"Our recruiting person is visiting all of the hospitals recruiting wounded warriors and it is working well," Vice President for training services with L3 David Williams says.

He adds that the academy is now part of the Wounded Warrior Program, which helps Vets like Forbes find new careers outside the military.

“I was ecstatic to hear about the chance, so I took it," he says.
Considering that due to mandatory retirement, 17,000 air traffic controllers will be retiring over the next ten years.

Forbes says he is excited about becoming an air traffic controller and he believes his experience as a soldier will help him excel.

"In the military you had to constantly talk on the radio, you had to give directions, and you had to be very accurate, or people could lose their lives,” he says. “It is the same way in air traffic control."

Williams says that his company recognizes that the skills needed to be a good soldier are the same needed to be a successful flight controller.

“These folks, not only with their buddies, but with those they are defending, hold people’s lives in their hands. It is no different going into a control tower."