Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy expects the whole country to experience travel complications such as those prevalent at Newark Liberty International Airport due to the United States’s outdated air traffic control system and decades-old airport equipment.
In recent weeks, Duffy has worked with the Federal Aviation Administration to resolve incidents at the New Jersey airport where radar screens went dark, causing air traffic controllers to briefly lose the ability to see or communicate with aircraft in the area. The alarming failures were caused both by persistent shortages in air traffic control staffing and equipment failures attributed to Newark’s reliance on outdated technology. The airport had another outage on Sunday morning, prompting the FAA to order a 45-minute ground stop.
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During an NBC News interview Sunday morning, Duffy warned he anticipates the problems at Newark’s airport will be faced by airports across the country, saying he was “concerned about the whole airspace.” In an effort to solve some of the problems, he plans to extend the retirement age for all air traffic controllers, increasing the mandatory age from 56 to 61 years old and giving them a 20% upfront bonus to stay on the job.
“The lights are blinking, the sirens, the Congress and the country haven’t paid attention to it, right?” he told Meet the Press. “They expect it to work, and so now I think the lights are blinking, the sirens are turning, and they’re saying, ‘Listen, we have to fix this,’ because what you see in Newark is going to happen in other places across the country.”
“It has to be fixed,” Duffy concluded.
Duffy asserted it is still safe to fly in the U.S., but he added that major outages such as the ones in Newark could still pose “a risk to life” and must be swiftly resolved.
“We are the safest airspace for sure, and traveling by air is way safer than any other mode of transportation, which is why I take it,” the transportation secretary said. “But again, that doesn’t mean you don’t look over the horizon and say, ‘Hey, if there is a major outage, could that be a risk to life?’ Of course, it could be, which is why we fix it.”
Last week, Duffy unveiled a sweeping plan seeking to modernize the country’s air traffic control system, hoping to address Newark’s issues as well as other incidents, including the mid-air collision in Washington, D.C., in January that killed 67 people.
The plan called for tens of billions in congressional funding to revamp the overburdened air traffic system, addressing outdated equipment, severe personnel shortages, and deteriorating infrastructure. The overhaul includes advanced fiber, wireless, and satellite systems; updated hardware and software across facilities; the replacement of 618 aging radars; and the construction of six new control centers along with modernized towers. It could take between three and four years to compete, per Duffy.
“This is bold. This is going to be challenging, but we absolutely can do it,” he said Thursday. “I think our country, our people, those who use the airspace, they deserve this moment in time to actually deliver an air traffic control system, one to keep them safe.”
The problems in Newark, Duffy said Sunday, are being ironed out. He anticipates the air system will be “up and running in short order.”
But across the country, airports’ “really old” infrastructure is a problem, spelling bad news for “overwhelmed systems,” he said.
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“What we’re having is some telecom issues. We’re also having some glitches in our software. As the information comes in, it’s overloading some of our lines, and the system goes down,” he said. “The equipment that we use, much of it we can’t buy parts for new. You have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down.”
“You’re dealing with really old equipment,” he added. “We’re dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber. And so this is concerning. Is it safe? Yes, we have redundancies, multiple redundancies, in place to keep you safe when you fly. But we should also recognize we’re seeing, we’re seeing stress on an old network, and it’s time to fix it.”