Air traffic control is faced with intimidating obstacles: NPR

Washington – This week, the chief of the Federal Aviation Administration have an ambitious goal of bringing the United States air traffic control system in the 21st century.

“The idea is to replace the system,” said the acting administrator of the FAA, Chris Rocheleau A audience on Wednesday. “More floppy disks or paper strips.”

This is an objective that has escaped all the predecessors of Rocheleau. Entering many country traffic control towers in the country is like going back in time. 20th century technology is still widely used today – including, yes, floppy disks, Paper flight bandsand computers running Windows 95.

More than a third of the country’s air traffic control systems are not durable, According to an assessment of the FAA from 2023And some are starting to fail.

The fragile state of the system has become obviously during the recent radar and communication failures that led to hundreds of Delays and cancellations At Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey.

“This is the most important infrastructure project we have been in this country for decades,” said Sean Duffy, transport secretary A press conference At Newark Airport on Monday. “Everyone agrees, it’s not a supporter. Everyone knows that we have to do it.”

Duffy wants a A brand new air traffic control systemAnd it has wide support through the aviation industry: Union which represents air controllers, trade groups for airlines and manufacturers. They all signed a coalition called Modern skythat produced a Television Building strongly on the nostalgia of the 80s with portable cassette players and legs.

“It was then,” said the narrator. “But four decades later, the floppy disks are still used to execute our air traffic control system.

It is easy to joke about obsolete equipment. But it will be much more difficult to compensate for decades of underinvestment and unsuccessful attempts to modernize the system.

“Basically, it’s a money problem,” said Michael Huerta, former FAA administrator under President Obama. Huerta also chaired a safety exam team that I looked at air traffic control System and reported its results at the FAA two years ago.

“The FAA was invited to do more with less, essentially,” said Huerta in an interview.

The Trump administration has not said how much a new air traffic system will cost. Secretary Duffy estimates that the price is in the tens of billions of dollars and aims to finish it in the four years.

The Transport Service asks private companies for their ideas on how to achieve this. This week, the FAA has published a request for information to an “integrator” who could take the lead in the construction of the new system, and it invites companies to present their “best ideas and new technologies” in a series of so-called “days of the industry” next week.

“This is an extraordinarily ambitious plan,” said David Grizzle, a former FAA operation chief who also participated in the security examination team. He is encouraged to see that the Trump administration is looking outside the government to get help.

But he also sees some possible obstacles. The FAA spent a lot of money on upgrades before, said Grizzle. But it hasn’t always seen a big gain.

“The FAA was not allowed to close the old old equipment,” said Grizzle. “So, following this, even the money they have for the equipment, more than 90% will finance the old equipment.”

There are also other potential roadblocks.

A big question is what to do on the 21 air traffic control installations which manage high altitude traffic. Many of them are old and collapsed. The dowry proposed to build only 6 new ones, leaving exactly what would happen to others, while suggesting that the FAA might want to “consolidate” these facilities to save money.

“I think consolidation is something that should be part of this plan,” accepts Huerta. “All those who know the air traffic system recognize that we probably don’t need the number of facilities that have been built at a time when technology was very different, that we can manage with a smaller number.”

But the policy around consolidation will probably be brutal, concedes Huerta, as members of the Jostle Congress to protect the installations from their own districts. And many in the industry say they are skeptical about the aggressive calendar of the Trump administration.

“There is no way that they can finish all this in the four years,” said Grizzle. “But if they could simply start in each elements and start a race, it would be great.”