Updated at 2PM ET
With major technical failures at Newark Airport and the deadly plane crash in January in Washington D.C. as the backdrop, the Trump administration has proposed a multibillion-dollar overhaul of the US air traffic control system.
The Transportation Department said in a statement the current ATC system is "antiquated" and promised its new "state-of-the-art" system will improve safety and cut back on delays.
“The FAA is going to undertake an initiative that has never been done before,” US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in announcing his long-awaited plans at a news conference on 08MAY. “All new hardware, all new software is going to be built into this brand new air traffic control system.”
The urgent need for improvement was highlighted less than 24 hours later when air traffic controllers lost radar contact with aircraft flying in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport in the early hours of 09MAY. A Federal Aviation Administration statement said the blackout happened at 3:55 AM ET and lasted about 90 seconds, as reported by CNN. It follows on the heels of a similar incident at Newark on 28APR when an outage caused ATC computer screens to go dark for 60 to 90 seconds, preventing controllers from talking to aircraft and forcing the FAA to briefly halt all departures to the airport.
At his news conference, Duffy called for billions of dollars in funding from Congress, Politico reported. “If we don’t actually accomplish the mission that we’re announcing today… you will see Newarks in other parts of the country, because it’s an aging system, and so we have to actually upgrade it.”
“Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now," Duffy said in prepared remarks.
PBS reports that Duffy compared the new upgrades to upgrading from a flip phone to a smart phone. “We use radar from the 1970s,” Duffy said. "This technology is 50 years old that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another.”
Duffy's plan includes six new ATC centers as well as technology and communications improvements at air traffic facilities nationwide over the next three or four years. Crucially, it will upgrade the radio systems that air traffic contollers use to communicate with pilots, replacing copper wiring with fiber optics, the New York Times reported. The plan would also "digitize flight data management tools and update deteriorating air-traffic control facilities around the country. It also proposes deploying new technologies to Alaska and the Caribbean to provide more accurate weather and surveillance information".
What's the Cost?
Duffy did not put a pricetag on the plan. But Politico reported that “The Modern Skies Coalition, an umbrella group for dozens of aviation industry groups including major U.S. airlines and some associated unions, said it would take $31 billion to do what Duffy wants to do — and maybe more.”
“We need all of the money up front,” Duffy said at the news conference, adding that the final pricetag is up to the US Congress. “One of the problems in the past is when you give small tranches of money year over year, politics change, leadership changes, presidents change ... and it never gets built.”
PBS said more than $14 billion has been invested in upgrades since 2003, “but none have dramatically changed how the system works.”
Duffy has repeatedly blamed the Biden administration for not fixing a problem he said has been festering for 30 to 40 years.
FAA and NTSB officials attended the news conference, as well as chief executives of the largest US airlines and aircraft manufacturers.
“Today is actually a historic day, I think, for the FAA and the United States air traffic control system,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told CNN. “The bill… really leaves me the most optimistic I’ve been in my entire career that we’re finally going to get air traffic control modernized and fixed.”
