It’s Time For Congress To Stop Gambling With Airline Safety

On April 28, air traffic controllers lost all radar and radio contact with planes headed into one of the nation’s largest airports.

For nearly 90 seconds, air traffic controllers couldn’t see, hear, or communicate with flights inbound to Newark Liberty International Airport — a horrifying blackout that underscores the urgent need for a complete overhaul of our air traffic control system.

The culprits were a fried copper wire transmitter and a failed backup communications line — symptoms of an antiquated air traffic control infrastructure that faces mounting pressure with every passing day.

Although flight remains the safest form of commercial travel, we shouldn’t tempt fate. It’s foolish and negligent to continue standard operating procedures amid the aviation sector’s rapid deterioration.

At present, 76% of all functioning air traffic control systems are “unsustainable” or “potentially unsustainable.” Moreover, 90% of towers nationwide are significantly understaffed amid glaring failures in recruitment and training.

But these visible failures signal a deeper problem with American aviation: consistent obstruction of necessary investments in America’s aviation infrastructure.

Congress has repeatedly failed to allocate enough funding for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Even when it does provide funding, it is often distributed by agencies in an inefficient manner due to burdensome regulatory processes. At times, these bureaucratic hurdles block funding altogether.

With all the wasteful spending and other non-essential things American taxpayers fund, upgrading the nation’s air traffic control system is, correctly, a top priority for President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.

But if we expect to keep our airways safe and secure, and ensure that America has the best air traffic control system in the world, it also needs to be a top priority for Congress.

To make matters worse, the FAA is presently without clear, stable leadership. Nearly two months after the president’s nomination of Bryan Bedford to lead the FAA, Congress has yet to schedule his confirmation hearing. Bedford’s nomination has received overwhelming support from airline industry leaders, and his swift confirmation would expedite the implementation of necessary reforms in American aviation.

Recently, Secretary Duffy reiterated the urgency of enacting such reforms, unveiling a comprehensive plan to realize Trump’s vision to restore safety and excellence to the industry. The plan includes immediate emergency funding for the most critical system updates, multi-year budgets so the FAA can prioritize innovation, and supercharging the air traffic controller training and hiring pipeline.

Cooperation from enforcement and budgeting agencies and their leaders is critical for implementing this ambitious and necessary plan and ensuring that funding is directed toward the most acute areas of concern. Once Congress moves to provide funding, swift action and coordination from departments like the Office of Management and Budget, where I once served, is paramount to seamless air travel and this plan’s success.

The funding approval and regulatory enforcement processes must be expedited so that funds can easily and efficiently reach air traffic control towers, operators, and training centers. We cannot allow these urgent reforms to be derailed by bureaucratic backlogs, red tape, and delays in leadership appointments.

Frugality to the extreme can quickly become recklessness — especially when it means gambling with the lives of pilots and passengers. There is no badge of honor for continuing to push off essential upgrades to ensure safety in the skies. We must ensure that the funding Congress allocates is distributed in a rational, efficient manner.

Once implemented, Secretary Duffy’s proposals will radically overhaul our air traffic control infrastructure by building six new control towers, replacing antiquated radars and communications systems — including WWII-era radar monitoring platforms and 1980s technologies like floppy disks — with updated wireless and satellite technologies, and streamlining hardware and software systems for a common national platform.

The American people have entrusted their safety to the government. President Trump and Secretary Duffy have answered that call with a plan of action. Once congressional funding is secured, it will be our agency leaders’ duty to steward taxpayer dollars toward this end in an efficient and responsible manner.

Overhauling our air traffic control systems will be a joint effort between Congress, the president, and our executive agencies. Together, their regulatory and enforcement work must be a catalyst, not a speed bump, in making the president’s vision a reality.

Once a paragon of innovation and excellence, America’s air traffic system has descended into atrophy. But this administration finally has a chance to enact the change we so desperately need — a chance to restore American ingenuity and maintain safety in flight in perpetuity.

Joe Grogan served as Assistant to President Donald Trump for Domestic Policy from 2019-2020 and Associate Director of the Office of Management and Budget from 2017-2019.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.