On Thursday, May 8, Democratic Representative Rick Larsen (WA-02) spoke at a press conference with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy in Washington D.C, who announced plans by the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to revamp and replace air traffic infrastructure nationwide.
As the ranking member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Larsen (WA-02) helped spearhead the “overwhelmingly bipartisan” FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024, which “established the to-do list for ATC [air traffic control] modernization,” Larsen said.
Almost a year after President Joe Biden signed that bill into law, Larsen sees those efforts paying off. “We provided the what-to-do list, and I’m really pleased to see Secretary Duffy and the administration moving forward on the how-to-get-it-done list,” he said. “In the wake of the tragic mid-air collision over the Potomac and a trend of runway near-misses, we have to get this right.”
Duffy compared current aviation infrastructure to a dated Volkswagen Beetle, stating that he instead wanted a “brand-new car, a brand-new system.” Without mentioning a price, he said that Congress would need to pass legislation providing money “up front” to avoid project backlog. “They can pressure test what’s been done to do the oversight to make sure we’re doing this correctly,” he said.
“Under President Trump, America is building again. Today we are seizing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a brand new, state-of-the-art air traffic control system,” said Secretary Duffy. “Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age. Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now.”
During his announcement, Duffy emphasized that permit reform by the Republican-led Congress would be necessary in order to meet his four-year goal of implementing the new system.
Rep. Larsen seemed to acknowledge that sweeping modernization efforts would take longer than Secretary Duffy’s estimate, but maintained optimism in his statement.
“We’ve talked about how this effort sometimes spans administrations. We don’t want the effort to span generations,” Larsen said. “We need to get moving on this sooner rather than later.”
Reported proposals within the air traffic infrastructure plan thus far include:
- Full replacement of the existing TDM network with IP.
- Replacement of TDM Radios to full Voice IP.
- Full replacement of the cooperative (beacon) and non-cooperative surveillance. Moving from 12 different configurations to 2.
- Replacement of the current Surface Movement Radar.
- Deployment to 200 airports for surface awareness.
- Rearchitect the antiquated slow Traffic Flow Management System (TFMS)
- Move the Alaska Flight Service system to be like the continental U.S. (CONUS)
- Deploy additional flight strips to 89 towers
- Accelerate the Deployment of full services DataComm which enables texts to pilot vs current voice
- Accelerate the deployment of replacing the antiquated Information
- Display Systems (IDS) that were deployed in the 90s (with floppy and CDs)
- Move from 3 Automation systems to 2 common automation platforms (enroute and terminal)
- Building 6 new state-of-the-art Air Traffic Control Centers for the first time since 1960s
- Deploy 15 new Towers and 15 co-located TRACONs
- Improved flow of air traffic into JFK and LGA
But there’s a human element to ATC that advances in infrastructure and technology may or may not address.
According to Reuters, the FAA is “about 3,500 air traffic controllers short of targeted staffing levels and nearly all control towers have staffing shortages… At many facilities, controllers are working mandatory overtime of up to 12 hours a day and six-day work weeks to cover shortages. That leaves just four days off each month for what air safety experts widely agree are high-stress jobs.”
Pointing to a “need for equipment modernization,” National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), the federal ATC union, stated that the new plan will “provide a remarkable downpayment toward the investments that FAA’s facilities and equipment require.”
“NATCA has been raising the awareness of the ATC staffing shortage for more than a decade. We were very encouraged by the provisions contained in the bipartisan FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 that made significant improvements to hiring and training,” said NATCA President Nick Daniels. “We applaud the Administration’s and Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s commitment to making improvements to ATC staffing and technology.”
Last week, the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved $12.5 billion to fund the FAA modernization process. The Modern Skies Coalition, an aviation industry association that includes NATCA, endorsed the plan, but said that costs could amount to more than $31 billion. “Whether it’s part of the big, beautiful bill, or it comes in a different package, we do need all the money,” Secretary Duffy said.
“We’d like to give out one big, beautiful contract,” President Donald J Trump said on the phone with Duffy during Thursday’s presser, name-dropping IBM and Raytheon as candidates to lead the modernization project.
Author: Kayvon Bumpus
