The US Department of Transportation (DOT) unveiled a plan to build a brand new air traffic control system that addresses critical safety needs. This follows several telecommunications outages that impacted communications and radar display at the Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) facility’s Area C on April 28 and May 9, which severely disrupted operations at New York Newark.
The DOT's actions include replacing antiquated telecommunications with new fibre, wireless, and satellite technologies at more than 4,600 sites, 25,000 new radios, 475 new voice switches, 618 radars, as well as building six new air traffic control centres, towers and TRACONs, and more.
In addition, the Trump administration is looking to “supercharge” the controller workforce and announced a program to speed up hiring and give existing controllers higher wages to avoid early retirements. The US currently has around 14,000 air traffic controllers and it is expected that about 3,000 more are needed to fully staff the system, the Associated Press reported.
“Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now,” said Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy.
