By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON, July 17 (Reuters) – The head of the Federal Aviation Administration says the agency needs another $10 billion from Congress to reform the antiquated U.S. air traffic control system as policymakers prepare for traffic to double in the next two decades.
FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the agency is moving rapidly to deploy the first $12.5 billion approved by Congress after years of neglect. “We’re behind 20 years. The system is extremely safe, but it comes at the price of inefficiency and inconvenience,” Bedford said in an interview. “Americans tolerate this hugely inefficient system… And as long as it’s safe, I think that sort of saps the will to fix it.”
The FAA is spending billions to replace outdated air traffic control telecom infrastructure and radar surveillance systems after a series of failures including significant serious outages covering Newark and Washington traffic and a 2023 failure of an FAA system that forced a brief nationwide ground stop.
Major aviation groups this week backed the call for new spending on air traffic reforms.
The FAA is shrinking radar and telecom modernization into a three-year timeline, down from 15 years, and has already replaced 57% of its copper infrastructure.
Bedford wants to launch a new system to overhaul flight scheduling to improve flight management in September. It aims to prevent significant congestion and delays by using AI to coordinate schedules and trajectories before departures.
Bedford said the airlines build significant extra time into their schedules because of inherent delays in flights. “If we pull all of that cost out of the system, inconvenience comes out of the system,” he said.
The FAA is internally rewriting the rules on how the airspace management process works. Bedford wants airplanes connected with low Earth orbit satellites that would turn every plane into a weather station and lead to fewer delays.
Bedford, who hit a year on the job last week, is working to redesign airspace to make flights more efficient and has imposed additional restrictions on helicopters after the fatal collision of an American Airlines jet last year with a U.S. Army helicopter that killed 67 people. He plans to soon unveil a “Flight Plan 2027” on the next round of FAA reform targets.
Bedford is undecided about whether the FAA will move forward with requiring ADS-B, a key advanced aircraft-tracking technology, as Congress considers legislation. “Everybody agrees that everything operating in the airspace should be broadcasting,” Bedford said.
One big step is expected in late 2027 when air traffic control will move from analog to digital communications. The FAA will later shift all 313 facilities from running on individual computers to the cloud.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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