Robert Silk
Overconfidence can be dangerous.
That was my thought after Transportation secretary Sean Duffy announced at a March 11 press conference that he intends to deliver a brand new, "gold-plated" U.S. air traffic control system within four years.
The secretary went on to say that he'll be submitting a plan to Congress in the coming weeks that will amount to tens of billions of dollars.
Duffy's ambitions are laudable. In 2023, the FAA determined that 51 of its 138 systems are unsustainable. One major concern is a growing shortage of spare parts. This even though the FAA has spent nearly $20 billion on the NextGen ATC modernization program since 2007.
In the aftermath of the late-January crash near Washington Reagan National that killed 67 people, Duffy sees an opening for faster action.
His timeline, however, appears more tethered to the time frame of President Donald Trump's second term than it is to reality. And it seems contradictory that despite such grand ambitions, the Trump administration is currently thinning FAA staff. Approximately 400 probationary FAA staffers were dismissed on Feb. 14 as part of the mass cuts that DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, is making to the federal work force. At least some of those workers were being rehired last week under court order, but far more cuts, both of FAA staff and of FAA contractors, are expected any day, pursuant to a late-February Trump executive order.
Indeed, these must be confusing times within the FAA.
Though there are safety benefits, modernizing the ATC system will mostly help efficiency.
For example, a program called Terminal Flight Data Manager, which is in early deployment, will automate processes to enable more efficient management of airport surface traffic. For airlines, that will mean less hold time on the ramp and taxiways, reducing fuel burn and emissions.
It's not clear how Duffy foresees proceeding with his "gold-plated" ATC system. He has said that he wants to hire some of the best engineers in the country. Maybe he anticipates a spate of new hiring specific to undertaking this desired task.
A current FAA employee, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, told me that the DOGE team has been offering a blank check. Tell us what you need and we'll make sure you have it, they say. And don't worry about the usual bureaucratic constraints and processes.
But building out the new system will be far more complicated than Duffy and the administration imagines, the worker said.
First, the existing system must be continuously maintained while work is done, a time-consuming and costly task. And all upgrades have to be thoroughly tested and backed up with several layers of redundancy so that constant operations can be assured.
Beyond that, controllers will have to be trained on each of those systems, a process that will take considerable time, especially considering long-standing controller shortages.
The employee also said the DOGE team is looking at the various systems to be overhauled with a silo mentality, rather than understanding that they will have to be integrated in coordination.
"DOGE does not understand what we do," the worker said, asserting that a four-year timeline is not feasible.
None of this is to say that the air traffic control system doesn't need to be modernized. It does. And the administration, alongside Congress, is right to want to move beyond the costly failures that led NextGen to be nicknamed NeverGen.
But Duffy, and all aviation stakeholders, should be wary of overconfidence and unrealistic targets. No one wants to move from failure to calamity.