By Sarah Roderick-Fitch | The Center Square
(The Center Square) — Air travel is about to enter a new era as President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled plans to upgrade the nation’s “outdated” air traffic control system.
The administration announced the new system Thursday afternoon, following promises to upgrade it. The administration boasted that the new system is ” state-of-the-art.”
Duffy says the new system will replace outdated systems with modern technology. He claims the old system still uses floppy disks as a marker of its age.
The new plan includes developing six new air traffic control centers for the first time “since the 1960s ” and replacing over 600 radars, which the Department of Transportation argues are past their life cycle. The Federal Aviation Administration also plans to replace the “core infrastructure” to include “radar, software, hardware and telecommunications networks to manage modern travel.”
The new system will increase the number of airports with the Surface Awareness Initiative to 200, which the DOT claims will improve runway safety.
The DOT claims the new system will “reduce outages, improve efficiency, and reinforce safety,” which has come under scrutiny following several incidents, including plane crashes, near collisions and outages causing significant delays, including ongoing issues at Newark Liberty International Airport. Last week, an air traffic control equipment outage led to continual delays at the airport.
Duffy argues the upgrade is long overdue and a “necessity,” while commending the Trump administration for making it happen.
“Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age.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. The unprecedented coalition of support we’ve assembled – from labor to industry – is indicative of just how important it is to this administration to get done what no one else could,” said Duffy.
Several CEOs from the nation’s largest airlines, including United, American, Delta, Southwest and JetBlue, praised the new system and credited the Trump administration for its role in unveiling the upgrade.
“I’ve been in the airline business a long time, and that entire time, I’ve known that the U.S. air traffic control system was operating on antiquated technology. This plan from President Trump and Secretary Duffy is absolutely the best opportunity that we’ve had in decades to do something about our outdated air traffic control infrastructure and build a best-in-class system that our country deserves,” according to American Airlines CEO Robert Isom.
Since assuming his role at the DOT, Duffy has been a vocal critic of the old system, vowing to make overhauling it a priority along with the Trump administration.
