U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on Thursday will call for tens of billions of dollars to overhaul America’s strained air traffic control system to address crumbling infrastructure, dramatic staffing shortfalls and failing technology.
Key questions remain unanswered: Will it work? How long will it take? How much will Congress agree to spend? How will the government avoid the mistakes of prior reform efforts?
Duffy, who will be joined by the CEOs of the largest five U.S. airlines on Thursday to unveil the Trump administration plan, has said the project will take three or four years.
“You are starting to see cracks in the system,” Duffy said last week. “Everything—the hardware and the software—has to be redone.”
President Donald Trump, in a post on his social media platform before the announcement, blamed current air traffic control problems on the previous Biden administration and vowed “I WILL FIX IT.” He offered no details about the plan.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control network’s manifold woes have been years in the making, but a rush of high-profile mishaps, near-misses and a catastrophic crash in January have spiked public alarm and prompted new calls for action.
A mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter in January killed 67 people near Reagan Washington National Airport. On Thursday, another Army helicopter forced two flights to abort landings at Reagan.
Last week, controllers overseeing traffic at Newark Liberty International Airport lost communications with airplanes for at least 30 seconds because of a telecommunications and radar failure. Since then, hundreds of flights have been canceled or diverted at the airport just outside New York City.
A series of near misses between airplanes in recent months has further exposed the strain on air traffic control facilities and raised questions about pilot training amid repeated calls for reforms for years.
Fixing the system is a daunting task. Many of the 520 airports overseen by the FAA need new runway safety technology so controllers don’t rely on binoculars to see airplanes.
In 2022, for example, the FAA said it was working to end a long-ridiculed, decades-old practice of air traffic controllers using paper flight strips to keep track of aircraft. But adopting the change at 49 major airports will take the FAA until late 2029.
