Trump administration hopes to embark on ambitious overhaul of air traffic control

WASHINGTON (TNND) — The Trump administration unveiled an ambitious plan to overhaul the country’s outdated air traffic control system through huge investments in technology upgrades and technology after a series of issues that have stirred safety fears and stalled flights.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy held a press conference on Thursday with airline CEOs, union leaders and aircraft manufacturers displaying outdated equipment and machinery that is still in use with one speaker holding up floppy disks and strips of paper to emphasize the need to modernize air traffic control systems.

“We actually have to build a brand-new, state-of-the-art, air-traffic control system,” he said. “We have let this go for far too long.”

An eight-page framework released by the Transportation Department seeks to improve radio systems controllers use to talk with pilots, upgrade copper wiring with fiber optics and update degrading air-traffic control facilities at airports across the U.S. But it is still missing some key details to make the plan a reality and comes with the challenge of being unable to shut existing systems down to implement a new one.

Duffy asked Congress to approve “lots of billions” in funding, but did not have a set cost to make the plan happen. Industry groups have pegged the cost at a minimum of $31 billion over the next three years.

Years of stop-and-start funding and cutbacks to the Federal Aviation Administration and other agencies that oversee the nation’s flight infrastructure have been a key driver of the decline of the air traffic control system and other infrastructure.

Part of Duffy’s proposal seeks to avoid that scenario by asking Congress to approve the funding up front.

“We need all of the money up front,” he said.

Concerns about the FAA’s safety systems and outdated technology have been bubbling for years and frequently highlighted by government watchdogs and in other reports that have noted a longstanding issue with underfunding upgrades and degrading equipment.

A Government Accountability Office report released last year said 51 of the FAA’s 138 air traffic controller systems were unsustainable and another 54 were deemed potentially unsustainable.

“When are we going to wake up to the reality that we need to not just overhaul our infrastructure, but speed it up? We have been so slow to make and basically, to this point, we've been just using band-aids and bubble gum and duct tape. We need to have a serious program in place and implement it fully funded and finish the project so that we can improve our infrastructure because right now, a lot of it is just old and decrepit,” said Dan Bubb, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Honors College, and former airline pilot.

Those fears have been put into overdrive this year after the deadly crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people along with close calls at airports across the country and other issues. Technical issues have also put traffic at a standstill at some airports over the years, most recently at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey when a radar and radio outage caused major hiccups.

The FAA also has a history of struggling to carry out major projects and overhauls that have raised some skepticism from some lawmakers about throwing more taxpayer funds at the problems.

The Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, was approved by Congress more than two decades ago with the goal of allowing airlines to operate more flights, improve safety and increase efficiency. The FAA released its initial plan in 2004 and said last year that it was expected to be completed by 2025, which has since been delayed to 2030.

But experts have frequently pointed to changing funding levels and shifting priorities from Congress and administrations that change throughout the implementation of projects.

Duffy estimated the project would take three to four years if lawmakers provided the funding and the government can avoid some regulatory requirements, an ambitious timeline for a major undertaking for a system that shepherds millions of passengers on a daily basis.

Whether lawmakers in Congress have the appetite to approve more emergency spending remains an open question, especially considering steep spending cuts the GOP majorities are hoping to enact moving forward. But Duffy’s plan has received the backing of President Donald Trump, who called in to Thursday’s press conference and backed it.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and the chair of the Senate committee that oversees the FAA, said at Thursday’s event that he would work to give the department whatever it needed to accomplish the plan. The backing from Trump and Cruz gives the hopes for funding a boost, but whether the full Senate and House will back it is less certain.

“What's it going to take? Hopefully no more crashes, hopefully no more lives lost to get this project done,” Bubb said. “We're talking about a major transportation system that so many people depend on. You're talking about human lives. It should not be a political issue at all. It's a common-sense infrastructure issue, so stop playing politics and start funding this and follow through with it.”