FAA funding and a close call
- FAA chief Bryan Bedford said modernizing U.S. air traffic systems will require more funding and time to complete. (npr.org) - The Transportation Department is replacing paper strips, copper wires, and floppy disks but still needs money for new software and AI. (cnn.com) - Meanwhile, the FAA is probing a near miss in Nashville where two Southwest jets were placed on a potential collision course. (nytimes.com)
The Federal Aviation Administration says rebuilding the technology behind U.S. air traffic control will take more money and more time, even after a new round of federal spending. (npr.org) FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said April 22 that the current system still relies on analog-era tools, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Congress’s $12.5 billion from the July 2025 reconciliation law is not enough to finish the job. (npr.org) (rollcall.com) Duffy said the buildout itself is supposed to take about two and a half years, but the department still needs money for the software layer, and the White House’s fiscal 2027 budget request seeks $4.9 billion for a modernized air traffic control system. (rollcall.com) (whitehouse.gov) The work is not just about swapping old hardware for new hardware. Air traffic control is the system that tracks planes, spaces them apart, and routes takeoffs and landings, and federal officials say parts of it still run on paper flight strips, copper communications lines, and floppy disks. (cnn.com) (npr.org) Since the 2025 law passed, Transportation and FAA officials said they have replaced nearly half of the system’s copper wiring with fiber, converted about 270 radio sites, installed new surface-awareness systems at 54 airports, and moved 17 control towers from paper strips to electronic ones. (rollcall.com) The urgency is not theoretical. The FAA is investigating a near miss over Nashville on April 18 after an air traffic controller directed one Southwest Airlines jet into the path of another, forcing both crews to respond to onboard collision alerts. (nytimes.com) (nbcnews.com) NBC News, citing audio and flight-track data, reported the planes appeared to come within about 500 feet after one jet aborted its landing and another had just taken off from a parallel runway. The FAA said Southwest Flight 507 received instructions from air traffic control that put it in the path of the departing plane. (nbcnews.com) Federal officials have been under pressure to show progress since the January 29, 2025 midair collision near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport killed 67 people, and since the January 2023 Notice to Air Missions outage triggered a nationwide ground stop. (rollcall.com) (faa.gov) A Government Accountability Office review found 51 of the FAA’s 138 air traffic control systems, or 37%, were unsustainable, and another 54 were potentially unsustainable. That helps explain why officials are talking about software, staffing, radios, towers, and wiring in the same breath. (gao.gov) The administration says Peraton, named in December 2025 as the project’s prime integrator, will help deliver a “brand-new” system, while Bedford has said the funding approved so far is only a down payment. Congress now has to decide whether to pay for the rest before the next close call becomes the bigger story. (faa.gov) (npr.org)
