Latest news with #BrandNewAirTrafficControlSystem
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
It'll Cost About $31 Billion To Fix America's Airports And It All Might Go To Elon Musk
Asking Congress for tens of billions of dollars doesn't seem like a big ask for a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. However, lawmakers get sheepish if you want to modernize the country's crumbling air traffic control infrastructure. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled his plan to fix aviation safety last Thursday, blandly titled "Brand New Air Traffic Control System." He wouldn't attach a price tag to the revamp plan, but groups within the aviation industry believe it will cost $31 billion. However, the revamp would worryingly involve giving a single contract to one company. The framework document outlining the "Brand New Air Traffic Control System" emphasized the urgency of how dated and broken the current infrastructure is. The eight-page summary directly referenced the 2023 NOTAM system failure that caused the first nationwide ground stop since 9/11. The proposal's scale is monumental. It would involve digitizing flight management systems at nearly 90 airports, replacing over 25,000 radios and modernizing over 600 airborne radar systems. In three years, air traffic controllers will move from tracking planes with handwriting on paper strips to computer terminals. Read more: Cheap-Feeling, Underpowered, Or Just Ugly, These Cars Don't Justify Their Price Despite the Trump administration's obsession with reducing federal spending and recklessly gutting the government, the White House is seemingly willing to spare no expense to get this done and is successfully begging Congress for the money. According to Politico, the House Transportation Committee approved $12.5 billion to modernize air traffic control. However, Committee Chair Sam Graves stated that the massive sum was only a "down payment." The Modern Skies Coalition estimates that it will cost $31 billion. The group advocates for industry modernization and includes nearly the entire industry in some capacity, from aerospace giant Boeing to the Teamsters. There's a plan and there's a vague price tag, so who's going to do the work? President Donald Trump phoned into Duffy's press conference to state that the administration wants to award only a single contract for the entire project. According to FlightGlobal, He said through Duffy's smartphone: "The ancient infrastructure is buckling. We'd like to give out one big beautiful contract, where they are responsible for everything from digging ditches to the most-complicated stuff." It seems like a recipe for disaster to hand out a single contract for this massive project. Trump said that they were already in talks with multiple bidders, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that SpaceX is bidding for the $31 billion contract. Elon Musk's private space company was tasked by the President in January to diagnose the problems with air traffic control. In February, the FAA also awarded a contract to Starlink to be its new backbone for weather information transmissions. This just seems like another opportunity to shovel money into Musk's bank account. The White House shouldn't be using the desperate situation to give massive sums of money to its allies. The growing public apprehension to fly caused by January's fatal mid-air collision at Reagan National Airport hasn't been calmed by the administration's response of shifting blame elsewhere. The crisis is only getting worse with the disturbing outages at Newark-Liberty International Airport over the past weeks. The facility's air traffic controllers endured 90-second intervals where they lost communications with planes and the aircraft weren't visible on radar. It was compounded by personnel going on leave to deal with the traumatic experience, because they knew how grave the outcome could've been. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
FAA reveals plan for new air traffic control system
May 8 (UPI) -- The nation's aging air traffic control system will be replaced with one that is aimed at 21st-century needs while improving safety, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced Thursday. "We are seizing a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build a brand new, state-of-the-art air traffic control system," Duffy said in a Federal Aviation Administration news release. "Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age," Duffy said. "Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now." The new systems will enhance safety, lessen delays, and unlock the future of air travel, the news release stated. It also will ensure air traffic controllers have a reliable system to effectively manage and direct air traffic at the nation's airports. Duffy said a coalition that includes labor and industrial interests is helping to design a modern system that greatly improves upon the existing one. Industry experts in March affirmed the need to modernize the nation's air traffic control system. The proposed plan has four components for improving infrastructure: communications, surveillance, automation and facilities. It seeks to replace old telecommunications systems with new fiber, wireless and satellite technologies at more than 4,600 sites and install 25,000 new radios and 475 new voice switches. The plan also requires replacing 618 radar systems that have exceeded their intended life cycles. The number of airports participating in the SurfaceAwareness Initiative is to increase to 200 and reduce the number of close calls between aircraft. The FAA also seeks to build six new air traffic control centers, which would be the first new ones in six decades. Installing new hardware and software for all air traffic control facilities will standardize their operations, while adding 174 new weather stations in Alaska will improve air travel safety there. Aerospace accounts for 5% of the nation's gross domestic product, which equals $1.25 trillion and supports more than 2 million jobs, according to the FAA. Aviation "is one of the nation's most important national security, economic and geostrategic assets," the FAA's BrandNew Air Traffic Control System report says. "It is critical the United States acts now to invest and modernize a National Airspace System that supports the future and moves beyond the 1960s," it concludes. No price tag or timeline has been placed on the plan, which was announced after the Trump administration in February fired hundreds of FAA probationary workers.
