WASHINGTON, DC – In remarks yesterday afternoon before a luncheon meeting of The Ripon Society, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy discussed the effort he is leading to strengthen America’s air traffic control system. It is a system, he noted, that is in desperate need of modernization, and one that – until the mid-air collision of an American Airlines passenger jet and U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopter in the sky above Reagan National Airport this past January – had managed to go 16 years without a fatal crash.
“Sixty-seven people lost their lives,” Duffy said of the accident, which happened on his very first day serving in the Cabinet post. “There were 85 near misses in this airspace in the three years before that crash. Someone should have seen that. I mean, if you had that many close calls, you would think someone would have said, ‘Maybe we shouldn't have so many helicopters and fixed-wing cross traffic in one of the nation's busiest air spaces.’ It prompted me and our team at the FAA to look and ask, ‘What aren't we seeing that could be happening right now in the airspace?’
“And the first thing that you come to is the aging infrastructure around your traffic control. We're using copper wire, not fiber. We have 1980s and 1970s equipment. When we actually bring in high-speed fiber, we have to slow it down so it doesn't fry the 1980s equipment. So we are going to ask Congress for a lot of money to build a brand-new air traffic control system – one that is gold-plated, state of the art, and the envy of the world.”
Duffy spent 10 years serving in Congress prior to being sworn in as America’s 20th Transportation Secretary on January 28th. In the 105 days since the tragic accident, he said he has been focused not only on identifying the weaknesses in the current air traffic control system, but the reforms that must be put in place to strengthen and modernize the system in the coming years.
One of those reforms, he said, is making sure the nation’s air traffic control towers are adequately staffed.
“We are 3,000 air traffic controllers short,” he said. “It's complicated because you don't train air traffic controllers quickly. It takes time to get them through the academy and then it takes a year to three years to train them. And we don't seem to be making a lot of progress in this regard. It seems like we lose as many air traffic controllers as we graduate from the academy. It's a lengthy process.
“If you ever were going to set up a system like this, you would never set it up this way. You'd set it up differently. But this is the system that we have. We're going to get more air traffic controllers through the academy. We have a 35 percent washout rate. We're going try to bring that down to 25 percent and get air traffic controllers training.
“At the same time, we have really great air traffic controllers who can retire after 25 years of service. We're going to pay them a 20 percent bonus to stay on the job and keep working. It's a patriotic duty, I would suggest, for them to continue to serve their country. And we're going to pay them 20 percent of their salary right up front.”
One of the other reforms that will have to be made, Duffy added, will be speeding up the bureaucratic rule-making process that, for too long, has slowed government decision making down.
“At the FAA,” the Secretary noted, we had a contract to upgrade our telecom system – a $2 billion contract. How long do you think it would take to execute on that contract? Any guesses? It would take 15 years – 15 years to upgrade it. Who's doing the work? Why can't we have people do it faster? And why would the FAA, with such an old system, hire someone to do the work over the course of 15 years when the work had to be done yesterday? Those are some of the problems that we're dealing with and trying to work through …
“Our mission is safety. And I know we can frustrate people when we slow traffic down, or flights are delayed or canceled. I've been at the airport when that happens, and if you have kids with you, it's even worse. But we are going to do that because we would rather slow traffic or have flights canceled before we let someone take a flight that we think is dangerous.”
To view the Secretary’s remarks before The Ripon Society yesterday afternoon, please click the link below:
