US Secretary of transportation Sean Duffy is gearing up to ask the US Congress to approve “upfront” funding needed to pay for an envisioned sweeping plan to modernise air traffic control (ATC) and to improve air safety.
“Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to come out with this plan. I am going to share it with the Congress. Get the feedback,” Duffy said on 11 March. “Then, I am going to come back and ask the Congress for all the money upfront, so we can expedite this process of building out this system.”
Duffy disclosed the plan in broad strokes on 11 March, the same day the National Transportation Safety Board issued recommendations in response to the 29 January collision of a PSA Airlines regional jet and a US Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.
The collision killed all 64 people on the regional jet and all three on the helicopter. The NTSB has said the helicopter had been flying at 300ft altitude, exceeding a 200ft cap for the flight corridor in which it was flying.
“It’s going to [cost] a lot of money,” Duffy says of his plan to modernise ATC. “It will be tens of billions of dollars to fix it.”
Numerous trade groups and labour unions have insisted for years that the FAA needs to modernisation its ageing ATC systems. The agency’s lacklustre progress is widely blamed on its dependence for funding on short-term spending bills passed by the US Congress. Those measures have hindered the FAA’s ability to make long-term investments, critics say.
Duffy, however, plans to ask Congress to approve what he describes as a massive spending package that would pay for the plan.
“We are going to lay out our plan, to actually do it really quickly,” Duffy says. “This is the time, when you lose 67 lives. I think we can honour those who lost their lives by paying this forward.”
The DOT does not intend to “go partial” with ATC modernisation, Duffy adds. “We are going to give you a brand new system.”
Additionally, he says the FAA in recent weeks started using artificial intelligence to identify potential safety risks at “12 airports” that have crossing air traffic.
“In the next two weeks, we are going to deploy that to all the airports around the country,” Duffy says.
