The U.S. Department of Transportation on Thursday announced a multibillion-dollar plan to build an entirely new air traffic control system and ramp up air traffic controller hiring.
“The system we have here is not worth saving,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. “I don’t need to preserve any of this. It’s too old.” The country needs a “brand new system,” he said.
Delta CEO Ed Bastian said a new system would have meaningful impact on delays and the airline’s ability to maximize its schedule.
“It’s hard to believe, and frankly unacceptable, that many of the systems our air controllers rely on today are more than 60 years old,” Bastian said at the announcement news conference, alongside other airline CEOs, members of Congress and union leaders.
He said disruption from a lacking air traffic control system — like what happened at Newark Liberty International Airport last week — “is something we all face on a regular basis.”
Because of an antiquated system and a lack of controllers, “to this day, we are not able to fly the schedule that we’d like or that our customers expect,” he said.
Last month, the Atlanta-based airline’s delay minutes because of Federal Aviation Administration staffing issues were up 106% year over year, he said. In January 2023, during the first nationwide U.S. ground stop since 9/11, Delta had to cancel nearly 150 flights.
In New York in particular, where Delta has spent the past decade investing billions at its John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airport hubs, ongoing air traffic control constraints “continue to hold us back operationally,” Bastian said.
Airlines plan schedules with the “assumption of FAA equipment running correctly,” he said. “Only a few minutes of downtime can ripple into a large-scale customer impact event.”
In a prior interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bastian pointed out that a more modern and effective traffic control system will actually make travel faster as well as safer.
Even though engines are faster than ever, “the flight times on planes today are slower than ever, because of congestion,” he said.
The DOT’s plan includes a complete replacement of the systems that comprise air traffic control, including fiber optic cable instead of copper wiring, and brand new telecommunications, surveillance, display and radio systems. It will also feature brick-and-mortar enhancements, Duffy outlined, including some new air traffic control centers, towers and weather observation infrastructure.
Although Duffy and the proposal documents do not outline a total cost for the plan, the House Transportation Committee approved a $12.5 billion “down payment” on it last week.
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