$12.5 billion ‘down payment’ to upgrade air traffic control

Washington —

The Department of Transportation is eliminating antiquated paper strips, copper communications wiring and computer floppy discs, but it says more money is needed to keep upgrading the decades-old air traffic control system, and integrate new technologies like artificial intelligence and software to streamline US flights.

At a news conference at the DOT headquarters on Tuesday, the agency showed the progress it has made in almost a year since it announced plans to build a new air traffic control system.

Congress allocated $12.5 billion in President Donald Trump’s spending bill – which the administration calls a “down payment” – but there’s still more to be done, said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

“We are going to need more money for the software side of this build,” Duffy told a room full of reporters and officials. “(Congress is) going to have to find a pathway to get us the rest of that money. It’s going to take us time to develop it, deploy it, debug it, train on it.”

The decades-old system has been under scrutiny by lawmakers, aviation officials and the public after a series of crashes and other high-profile incidents, spotlighting the stress controllers are under.

A fatal collision last month killed two pilots when their Air Canada regional jet hit a fire truck on a runway while landing at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. The cause of that crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Last year, 67 people were killed when a military helicopter collided with a plane landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. The NTSB found in that accident the controllers had “degraded performance due to the high workload.”

Since…

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