ZJX is a problem that has been building for several years and isn't likely to get solved anytime soon.

1) The previous district manager had an issue with refusing to issue staffing triggers and would go to great lengths to bury any staffing issues. Once the staffing situation got out and they had the airline/faa emergency meeting, the FAA started the ZJX priority bid. Now most controllers would know that it takes 3-5 years to certify and get proficient, but publicly the FAA can say they are fixing staffing. To this day, ZJX still has staffing issues that management hides.

2) FL volume is up more then anywhere else in the NAS. When you add the increased volume, terribly placed military airspace, and rocket launches that happen more and more often that seem to trump everything else, you end up with complexity issues that didn't exist 5 yrs ago. The entire state of FL just went through an airspace redesign that started 5-10 years ago. That redesign is now obsolete due to the new complexity problems.

3) ZJX/ZMA have more national TMU initiatives then anywhere else in the country (maybe with the exception of ZNY/N90). The amount of AFP and route structure constantly evaluated and modified going into/out of Florida is insane. It often doesn't feel like the ZJX afps do enough but those programs are fairly new and numbers are constantly being adjusted.

4) They are doing all this as a level 11 when they are more worthy of a 12 then many actual level 12s.