I stopped counting long ago, but there have been many, many attempts to try to modernize the US’s air traffic control (ATC) system over the years. As The Air Current‘s Will Guisbond told us in last week’s The Air Show podcast, there was an article written back in 1996 on the subject that could have been written yesterday. But it had been pretty quiet on anything actually getting done on that front in recent years with the Department of Transportation (DOT) more interested in overly-burdensome supposedly pro-consumer rules than actually doing the most pro-consumer thing that can be done… fixing ATC. This year, well, stuff is happening, and now we have the concepts of a plan. I don’t expect this to actually happen exactly as it’s being pitched, but I’m sure happy DOT is trying.
The news this year has finally brought things to a head. First, we had the mid-air collision between the American Eagle CRJ-700 and the Army Blackhawk helicopter. This, to be clear, likely had absolutely nothing to do with an air traffic control problem, but during the blame game, ATC took some stray bullets anyway. Then more recently we’ve had the train wreck that is Newark. I don’t need to go into full details (again, listen to The Air Show from last week or just keep watching the news for continued failures), but it has seemingly brought some urgency to the idea that air traffic control needs help sooner rather than later.
As I said on the pod, I was holding out hope that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy would be able to make something happen. After all, if there’s one thing this administration likes to do, it’s move fast and break stuff. This is the kind of thing I’d be happy to see them move fast on, and well, that’s the gist of what’s happening.
Last week, Duffy rolled out the inspiringly-titled “Brand New Air Traffic Control System.” It even has a logo that looks like someone just hastily went through a clipart library, so you know they mean business.
This is both ambitious and also… not at all. You can read the press release filled with mindless quotes, but I’d recommend reading through the modest 8-page proposal to get a real sense of what’s to come.
When I say it’s ambitious, I mean it is going to require a lot of money in a short time to make a lot happen. But when I say it’s not, it’s because most of this is just accelerating existing projects as opposed to reinventing the wheel. It is also light on details, including the amount of money that’ll be required. But it’s hard to criticize at this point, because it’s better than nothing, which is what we’ve had for too long.
So what is in this little gem? You probably don’t want to know, because it’ll make you wonder how the heck we’re even still functioning today. But here’s what’s planned to be done in short order.
- The current telecom system is built on tin cans and string. That will be replaced with “4,000 new high speed network connections on fiber, satellite, and wireless and over 30,000 services.”
- The 25,000 children’s walkie-talkies bought at Toys ‘R Us in 1984 will be replaced with internet-based radios.
- All of the “small tower voice switch, medium, TRACON, En-Route, Air-Ground converter and Ground-Ground converter” switches will be replaced. I don’t know what this is, but it sounds old and in bad shape.
- There are 618 FAA airborne radar systems, and they are not only old, but they also come in 12 different flavors thanks to patchwork changes over the years. These will be replaced, and there will be no more than 2 configurations.
- The surface radar which monitors what’s happening on the ground needs to be replaced at 44 airports. Then it needs to be rolled out to another 200 to expand the system’s reach to help improve safety on the ground.
- ADS-B satellite aircraft tracking will be installed in the Caribbean so that airplanes don’t just disappear into thin air.
- The current TFMS traffic flow system will be replaced by the FMDS. Other than replacing the T with a D and moving the letters around, this will make it easier to handle traffic flow management programs.
- You might not know this, but Alaska is still a state. And it has been neglected, so now it needs a whole slew of new and replacement automation to get things to operate more like they do in the rest of the US.
- In 89 airports, controllers will stop relying on paper flight strips for each flight and go to an electronic system. This sounds like a joke as several of my previous bullet points are, but it’s not. This is really how things are managed today. I know.
- Information display systems will be upgraded from a whole bunch of different systems presumably created by Zenith in the 1970s that actually still use floppy disks to something more functional today. It also needs to replace old automation platforms with a standardized option that does more than allow controllers to play Pong all day.
- Instead of replacing one old control tower per year, the rate will climb to 4 – 5 per year.
- FAA will take the 21 enroute centers (ARTCCs) and presumably burn their asbestos-filled carcasses to the ground before they collapse under their own weight. It will build 6 new centers with new technology to replace them.
In addition, there is a summary document that has a few more goodies in it which I didn’t see in the main proposal:
- Speed up the roll-out of DataComm which allows pilots to text with ATC like an 11-year-old schoolgirl instead of using voice. It’s unclear if emojis are part of the package.
- Build 15 new towers. Rapunzel! Rapunzel!
- Focus on New York since that’s the place that sucks the most.
Right, so this is a lot. But let’s just be clear again that much of this is not new. The proposal shows many of these projects are already scheduled and set to be done in the 2030s sometime. This would just speed up that process… to be done by 2028.
That’s right, 2028. We are talking about doing all of this in three years. That sounds like something the government is incapable of doing, but I am here for it. So, let’s go!
Not so fast. Right now, the government spends about $3 billion a year on aviation infrastructure. How much will this cost? We don’t actually know. This isn’t in the proposal, which is the biggest red flag that this isn’t fully baked just yet but we are talking about tens of billions of dollars.
Oh and did I mention that this requires Congress to approve the funding? Normally this is followed by the sound you hear when you are a loser on the Price is Right. But things are different these days. Now that Congress has decided not to do its job of acting as a check on the executive branch, it might be simple enough for the administration to just tell them to approve the money. Normally I’m a fan of checks and balances, but in this case, the dereliction of duty in Congress could actually work out for the industry.
To summarize, this is just a giant plan to throw a ton of money at a variety of efforts in order to speed up modernization. This doesn’t rethink the entire system and start over, because that would take ages. Instead, this is a brute force effort to get something done. Considering how many false starts we’ve had over the years, I’m comfortable just hoping that this one sticks. Three years sounds impossible, but I’m more than happy to root for everyone involved on the off chance this might happen.
