Topline
The Trump administration says it will replace the country’s aging air traffic control system with an all-new technology, following a fatal mid-air collision and a series of near misses in recent months—but first it needs Congress to approve tens of billions of dollars.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and five U.S. airline CEOs announced a plan to replace the … More
Key Facts
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a press conference Thursday called for Congress to allocate tens of billions of dollars to overhaul America’s strained air traffic control system and replace its antiquated technology.
Duffy said his agency would build a new air traffic control system “in three to four years” but needed Congress to make that happen, adding, “we need all of the money up front.”
President Donald Trump briefly joined the press conference by phone, saying his administration would award “one big, beautiful system” to a single contractor, replacing the FAA’s outdated system with “all brand new” technology.
The aging ATC system is “an untenable risk to safety” and a huge investment is “absolutely necessary to ensure safety in our skies,” Jennifer Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told reporters, repeating a previous urgent call for modernization.
Several members of Congress as well as more than a dozen leaders from the aviation community, including the CEOs from five major U.S. carriers—United, American, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest—took turns addressing the crowd in a unified showing that highlighted the overdue need to revamp the ATC system.
Key Background
The U.S. government has been talking about replacing the Federal Aviation Administration’s outdated air traffic control system for more than two decades, but no administration has managed to get it done. In 2003, the FAA’s NextGen system—a modernization effort designed to transition the nation’s ground-based air traffic control system to one that uses satellite navigation, automated position reporting and digital communications—got mired down by budgetary and logistical challenges and a culture of incrementalism. In 2017, during his first term, President Donald Trump called for privatizing the air traffic control system by 2020, but that plan went nowhere. During the Biden administration, the FAA was awarded tens of millions of dollars through the FAA’s Airport Infrastructure Grants FAA Contract Tower Competitive Grant program, part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, to upgrade existing control towers or build new ones. Yet through multiple administrations, the decades-old ATC technology has never been replaced. A November 2023 report from an independent FAA panel found the system was so old that it was difficult to obtain spare parts. Last September, the Government Accountability Office, an independent, non-partisan agency that works for Congress, reported that 51 of the FAA’s 138 air traffic control systems are unsustainable. Since the start of Trump’s second term, there has been a mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter that killed 67 people near Reagan Washington National Airport, as well as a series of near misses and runway incursions. Last week, controllers overseeing traffic at Newark Liberty International Airport lost radar communications with airplanes for at least 30 seconds.
Crucial Quote
“When systems go down…we don’t call the manufacturer to buy replacement parts for this equipment. Do you know where we go? Ebay,” Duffy told reporters. “We shop on eBay to replace parts, to fix our equipment in the system that keeps you safe, keeps your family safe.”
What We Don’t Know
Which company will oversee the project. Trump has previously said a large company like Raytheon or IBM would likely get the contract.
Tangent
Trump told reporters his private jet pilots “used to use systems from other countries to land. If I was landing in New York or something, they’d be using a different system to land in New York, because our system is so obsolete in this country.” The president made similar comments in February, telling attendees at a breakfast, “When I land in my plane, privately, I use a system from another country because…I won’t tell you what country…because the captain says this system is so bad, it’s so obsolete, that we can’t have that.” But aviation experts have told Forbes all private jets landing at U.S. airports use the same federal air traffic control (ATC) system unless the airport is so small that it does not have a tower. “All aircraft work with ATC—the electronics that they use to receive navigation information can vary, but they have to meet the same criteria,” aviation safety expert and retired commercial airline pilot John Cox told Forbes in an email. Two other aviation safety experts told Forbes they had no idea what the president was talking about.
Further Reading
Newark Airport Crisis: FAA Announces Upgrade Plan For Communication System (Forbes)
