After equipment failures, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is limiting the number of flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport, telling “Meet the Press,” “Listen, the system is old.” Ya think? We have Waymos and Teslas driving autonomously on city streets, yet our skies are controlled by radar, radios, floppy disks, paper strips (yes, literally paper) and computer visuals out of the 1983 movie “WarGames.”
The Federal Aviation Administration has been working on a modernized NextGen air-traffic control system conceived in 2003, set to roll out in 2025, oops, check that, 2030, but really more like 2040. Meanwhile, Mr. Duffy wants billions to Band-Aid today’s antiquated system. There has to be a better way.
The FAA tracks and manages more than 45,000 flights every day, carrying 2.9 million passengers. Much of the equipment is 25 years old and analog. Many displays are 2-D. Worse, air-traffic controllers pass along paper flight progress strips with flight number, destination and times flown over various radio beacons to track flights—like order slips at a burger joint. Controllers require training in Oklahoma City, and it takes years to become certified.
FAA modernization so far is something called Terminal Flight Data Manager, which features re-created paper-strip images on computer displays. San Francisco got upgraded just last month—12 airports have been so far. Newark’s upgrade is scheduled for October 2028. Government time. Meanwhile, communication lines go down, radios fail, and air-traffic-controller fatigue drives absenteeism.
The good news: Almost all commercial and many private planes already broadcast their GPS location, direction and speed via Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B). Why not harness that data?
I recently saw a video of a passenger playing the 3-D multiplayer videogame Fortnite on a Qatar Airways jet equipped with Starlink internet. That’s better technology than pilots or controllers have.