Podcast: Navigating Next Steps For U.S. ATC

Christine (00:38): Welcome to this week's Check 6 podcast. I'm Christine Boynton, Aviation Week Senior Editor for Air Transport. 

We're recording this episode in mid-May, just as airlines are about to enter the busy summer season, one that follows a record-breaking summer last year for air travel volumes. Meanwhile, all eyes are on our aging air traffic control system situation, further complicated by ongoing controller staffing shortages. On this topic, a lot of attention has gone to Newark lately where telecommunications outages have impacted communications and radar displays for controllers guiding aircraft in and out of that airspace. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has pointed to Newark as a great example of when this old infrastructure goes down--remarks that came as he unveiled plans for an upgraded US air traffic control system last week.  

So where are we now, and what will it take to truly achieve a world-class fully modernized system? Joining me today to dig into this topic are Sean Broderick Aviation Week Senior Editor for Air Transport and Safety, and Bill Carey, Aviation Week Senior Editor for Business Aviation. Sean, I'm going to kick it off with you because the issues--the aging pains--they're not limited to Newark. So maybe you can give us kind of an overview of where our ATC system is now and, setting staffing aside for a moment, how old are some of these technologies and what are controllers working with? 

Sean (01:56): Sure. As you hint at staffing is a huge issue here, but I think it's made worse by the fact that there is a lot of aging equipment in the system. So basically we're in the midst of a giant infrastructure modernization slash upgrade effort. And I think what the administration is trying to do now is expedite that. If you go back, I mean you can really go back to as early as probably early 1980s. The first time the FAA really took a holistic look at its air traffic system infrastructure and tried to map a way forward that would include not just upgrades, but some new ways of doing things. And one of the biggest ways was to change funding or funding mechanisms instead of it being controlled by Congress and appropriated in budgets. That may be a few years in length, if you're lucky and approved on time, if you're very lucky, they tried to get more of an independent self-sustaining system based with user fees. 

Sean (03:06): And as anybody listening with any knowledge of our civil aviation system knows user fees are not very popular with a numerous and politically powerful subset of the user base and most of them being the non-airline folk. So fast forward to the early 2000s when NextGen came around, and that was the FAA's effort to not just update the technologies, the copper wire and the radar systems that date, some of them that date from the 50s and 60s, but also to integrate or to introduce new ways of operating. And the simplest way sort of crystallize the NextGen vision is they wanted to go from ground-based navigation, satellite-based navigation. But the other thing that was very important that is still sort of a notional goal was the idea of what's known as trajectory-based operations. So basically where an airplane is at any given time and where it's going to be at any given time throughout its journey and by making it dynamic so things can be changed if circumstances change when an airplane is enroute, you can manage traffic in a holistic way and avoid or certainly minimize the kind of delays we see mostly at our larger hub airports. 

Sean (04:33): One of the things that NextGen got right is that the problems aren't all over the NAS. They're at the places where you have the most airplanes at any given time, and that's your metroplexes, if you will, your big areas. So trajectory based operations, but required not just upgrades in what we talked about, not just new radars, but it required new equipment on airplanes, new training. It required lots of newness and it's a years-long concept still one that's not just happening here, it's happening really all over the world or at least any place with modern ATC systems. But about 10 years into Next Gen, the stakeholders, not just the FAA, but the stakeholders got together via task force and RTCA task force and decided to shift the emphasis from big and new to realistic and least disturbing to the current fleet. So basically what that meant is let's take technologies that we already have that airplanes that being delivered today can already do or well a lot of airplanes that we're already in service can already do and let's sort of scale down the NextGen vision and shift it more to again what I refer to as infrastructure upgrade project. 

Sean (05:47): So that's where we've been for the last 15 years. And the reason why that the infrastructure hasn't been fixed and it hasn't been fast tracked, if you will, are all the things that they didn't solve, which was funding and prototyping and developing instead of just handing a contract to a private entity doing some rapid prototyping like they do in places like Canada saying, 'yeah, this is going to work,' and then releasing it out. We just have a different way of doing things here and getting past that is one of the things that we are coming up with better ways is one of the things that we continue to struggle with. So again, not to say that NextGen hasn't introduced, the FAA will say that everything they wanted to do in the NextGen program has been rolled out and put in place, and I think that's true, but what hasn't happened is the universal applications of it everywhere it needs to be, and more importantly the universal adoption by everybody in the system because something like trajectory-based operations is only, it's only effective if everybody is doing it or almost everybody is doing it. 

Sean (06:54): If you have mixed operations or mixed fleet flying if you will, then you have to account for the aircraft and the operators that don't have the ability to fly the procedures or to fly the approaches that the most advanced system capabilities will allow. So if you don't have all that, then you can never realize the full benefits of the system. And so that's sort of where we are. It's a long way of saying that's where we are now and in some critical infrastructure still is in the process of being upgraded. One of the biggest things is the enterprise networks funds the Verizon contract that's gotten a lot of publicity in the last few months. That's a 15 year contract. And so there's some talk that they haven't moved far enough in the year and a half that they've been working on it. I will leave that to experts that know far more than me, but that's critical. That's your backbone. So doing that now you can imagine some of the challenges that you have in trying to implement some of the things like the N90 switch that I'm sure you're going to get into Christine. We still have some fundamental things to lay on the foundation we can before these upgrades can be done and can be stable. So we're in the midst of a long and painful infrastructure upgrade project. That's where we are now. That's the short answer. 

Christine (08:18): Okay. Well as far as the, where might we be going, Bill, you covered Secretary Duffy's recent briefing where he unveiled his plans for the system. So what exactly does that vision look like and what will it take to be accomplished? 

Bill (08:31): Yeah, hello, Christine and Sean. Christine, as you prefaced US transportation secretary Sean Duffy on May 8th, unveiled a really ambitious proposal for a comprehensive system-wide upgrade among other things to speed the transition of the NAS telecommunications infrastructure that Sean was just speaking about from copper to fiber, and that's for inter-facility and air ground communications based on internet protocol for routing the data and including new digital radios and voice switches, new airborne and surface radar and surveillance capabilities and in terms of bricks and mortar, new and route and radar approach control facilities, that's things like heat and air conditioning and leaking roofs and improvements like that. The predicate for this, the catalyst really, Christine, you will speak about the situation in Newark and that's been much in the news, but really it was the January 29th midair collision of a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and an American Eagle CRJ regional airliner, which was on approach to Washington Reagan National Airport that really sent shockwaves to the public and is motivating the current retrospective of the entire air traffic control system. 

Bill (10:07): Sean Duffy had been sworn in as the Trump administration's transportation secretary the day before that mid-air collision and then he started, my understanding is the White House began this look into what can be done to prevent accidents like this from ever happening again. The catch is that the overall cost of this is undefined and whether it can be accomplished within the three-year timeframe that Duffy has laid out is, at best, uncertain. It will require an immediate infusion of billions of dollars from Congress. But just as important, there would need to be some sort of reform or a way to expedite the FAA's procurement process of soliciting information, requesting proposals, evaluating proposals, selecting a contractor defending against challenges 30 days to do this and 60 days to do that. That's going to have to be changed in order to accomplish what Duffy has proposed the industry in the form of a what's called the Modern Skies Coalition. 

Bill (11:29): It was a quickly coalesced grouping of 55 aviation trade organizations. They estimate that the cost of this would be at least $18.5 billion over three years on top of the FAA's annual Facilities and Equipment account, which traditionally has been funded in the order of $3 billion a year. The Trump administration is proposing $4 billion in the next FAA fiscal 2026 budget, which would be a good bump up, but most of the F&E account has been spent on sustainment of existing systems and facilities rather than recapitalization of new facilities. So if you were to take half of the $4 billion over three years, that gives you what, $6 billion plus the $18 billion that industry has suggested this will cost. And that's something on the order of $25 billion in the next three years. Some of that funding or proposed funding is contained within the current reconciliation package, the Trump administration's so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill." I think that's what our esteemed president calls it. And whether or not that package itself, it certainly will be restructured and may not itself pass because it's much bigger than just the FAA's budget. So really if this is going to happen on the administration's timeframe, three to four years, it's going to require an emergency infusion of untold billions of dollars by Congress. And frankly, I'm not optimistic.

Christine (13:19): It does seem to have a lot of different stakeholders supporting, which I know we've had a lot of calls for upgrades, as you've both mentioned over the years, over the past couple of decades. Five airline CEOs were among those to stand there with Duffy on May 8th as he announced those plans: American Airlines CEO Robert Isom, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian, JetBlue Airways CEO Joanna Geraghty, Southwest CEO Bob Jordan, and United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby. And as the largest carrier at Newark, one of its major hubs, United has been particularly vocal in recent calls for action. I just came back from a United event in New York yesterday and CEO Scott Kirby says he's very optimistic. He says he felt optimistic for the first time in his career that the system will be fixed, in part citing the broad support from folks across both sides of the aisle.

Christine (14:12): As far as the issues at Newark, I should mention that there's a meeting as we're taping today. There's a meeting scheduled for today in DC that was called by FAA and DOT to reduce airline schedules at that airport further and bring capacity down across the board to get total aircraft movements more in line with what Newark can handle now. And Newark is among the airports where FAA has previously issued slot waivers to help alleviate pressure. And Sean, as you mentioned, control of Newark airspace was moved from N90 New York's TRACON to Philadelphia last summer, and that was a move FAA believed would help relieve stress in New York and also help support recruitment efforts. So when I spoke with United leadership yesterday, they were seeing these upcoming reductions as potentially being enough to make Newark the most on-time airport in New York. We haven't seen that lately, so we'll see what comes out of that, but that's kind of where we are in Newark right now. So to toss it back to both of you though, I mean we've mentioned this a few times, calls to upgrade the system go back decades, and Sean, thank you for going into NextGen. Why haven't we seen what we're seeing now? Where has the focus been from previous administrations and what is new now?

Bill (15:24): Well, from my end, Congress in its authorization and appropriation role has consistently underfunded the FAA and capped its budget. And that's what has kept down the F&E budget—it has been relatively flat for something like 15 years. So that really has prevented the FAA from moving forward. On a lot of contracts, they have had some issues. ERAM, which is a Lockheed Martin automation system, the En Route Automation Modernization system that's equipped in ARTCCs, was delayed some number of months or years and over budget. And now that is one of the two automation platforms that the Duffy plan proposes replacing, including the STARS platform that TRACONs use. But some of this stuff is technology—aviation, they say space is hard. So in aviation, the ADS-B program that a lot of these upgrades will leverage in terms of surface surveillance in terms of what aircraft can do with ADS-B technology in the cockpits, that contract was awarded, I think it was in 2007 to the former ITT Exelis, and they rolled out a nationwide network of 650-odd ground stations to support ADS-B. That took time.

Bill (17:09): And so the FAA, through a rulemaking process that I think they passed a final rule in 2010, required that all aircraft flying in controlled airspace be equipped to broadcast their position by ADS-B as of 2020. So I mean that just kind of demonstrates the timeframe that it takes to develop these technologies, to regulate that they be used, and to equip them in aircraft cockpits. ADS-B technology—and both Sean and I have written about this—American Airlines has been an early adopter of ADS-B for surface awareness and flight following type capability in their A321s, but other airlines just haven't invested. So it's not entirely a government problem. It requires that the industry also pony up some investment and have some downtime on their aircraft and equip their aircraft. So I'll just make one other analogy. TCAS—the seminal event for TCAS was a 1956 mid-air collision over the Grand Canyon. It took 30 years to develop that into what today is TCAS II and to require that passenger-carrying aircraft carry that system, and that is the first, or actually the last line of defense to a mid-air collision. So technology takes time.

Sean (18:54): And Christine, I'll just add, and Bill sort of alluded to it, I don't think that previous administrations haven't focused on it. I mean, I would relate it to changing the tires on your car. Most of us either change two or if you have an all-wheel drive car, you change four. Well, what they've been trying to do with the FAA infrastructure upgrading is changing sort of a tire at a time and it might change a tire every other year. And so when you get into that kind of pattern, you're never going to get caught up. There's always going to be something else to do in the system. Then when you talk about introducing new technologies, it's the same thing—once they got ERAM right, let's say they didn't just release it over the next two or three years. It took 10 years to roll it out to all the centers where they wanted to have it.

Sean (19:43): And that kind of approach is never going to get, as Scott Kirby said, it's never going to get the system fixed. The only difference now that I see with what Duffy is trying to do is he wants to do everything more quickly. And that's fine. Once you get to the point where, like Bill said, the contracts are awarded and you've separated the wheat from the chaff in terms of how we're going to do this. Is it possible? I think it's possible, but it's that front-end part that they're going to have a hard time eliminating in my point of view, unless they break rules that are currently on the books and I suppose it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they could take that route and then claim national emergency or something. But it's hard to—even if you shrink the part of the process that can be shrunk, you're still talking a years-long effort to get, certainly the list of things in Duffy's plan done is a years-long effort. I think you're going to see a VC-25 delivered as the next Air Force One aircraft before you see that whole list of things done.

Bill (20:49): Well, we can just repaint that one.

Sean (20:53): Well, that doesn't count. Now if they do that, that doesn't count.

Christine (20:57): Alright, well on that note, that is a wrap for this week's Check 6 podcast. A special thanks to our podcast producer in London, Guy Ferneyhough. And if you haven't already, please be sure to subscribe to Check 6 so you never miss an episode. If you found today's discussion helpful, consider leaving a rating or a review. Better yet, share this episode with a friend or colleague. Thank you for your time and join us again next week for another Check 6.

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