America
Trump Acts to Improve Air Travel Safety
A
Upgrades ordered after series of harrowing incidents. BY DAVID A. PATTEN
n american airlines flight from Boston makes its final descent into Rea- gan National Airport in
Washington, D.C. Suddenly, controllers wave the air-
craft off to “ensure separation” — air traffic jargon describing the risk of a deadly collision. The pilots learn another jet was preparing to take off on the same runway. That same day, a Southwest Air-
lines flight was seconds away from touching down at Chicago Midway when pilots spotted an authorized aircraft crossing their runway below. They pulled up at the last second, barely clearing the jet crossing the run- way below. Those harrowing incidents, and many others, are part of a growing
litany of lapses in aviation safety. Painfully evident ever since Jan-
uary’s midair collision involving an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter that left 67 dead: U.S. aviation, once the envy of the Western world, is in des- perate need of a major overhaul. “Fate is screaming at us to do some-
thing,” said Dennis Tajer of the Allied Pilots Association, a group represent- ing 16,000 commercial aircraft pilots. “We’ve been seeing the indications.” Paul Rinaldi, past president of the
National Air Traffic Controllers Asso- ciation, recently shared the ugly real- ity he sees with the House Transporta- tion Committee. “In 2025,” he declared, “the [Nation-
al] Airspace System is no longer con- sidered the gold standard around the world. Several critical issues contrib-
ute to this: our aging infrastructure, our outdated technology, our [air traf- fic controller] staffing shortage.” Outdated technology, increasing
traffic congestion, and errors made by stressed out and overworked control- lers have all been blamed for making America’s skies less friendly. A recent GAO report revealed
that 105 of 138 vital Federal Aviation Administration systems are now so old they are “unsustainable” or “poten- tially unsustainable.” Transportation Secretary Sean
Duffy unveiled a series of moves to upgrade air safety. Among the plan’s key elements: SpaceX engineers have toured the
FAA’s Air Traffic Command Center in Northern Virginia and will help assess the agency’s technological needs. The FAA is installing long-planned
NextGen upgrades to relieve air traffic congestion and enhance safety. A “hiring supercharge” to allevi-
ate the long-standing shortage of air traffic controllers, which dates back to the Obama administration, will involve a simplified hiring process and a 30% salary increase for certified controllers. Additional measures include replacing copper lines with fiber optics, installing more powerful radars, giving controllers brand-new computer terminals, and installing sensors on runways so that the loca- tion of all aircraft can be constantly monitored.
Controllers Still Use Paper Slips to Track Aircraſt A
ir trafic controllers rely on strips of paper to keep track of many of the 45,000 flights that take off and land in the U.S.
every day. Known as “flight progress strips,” these paper notations are
placed together in “strip boards” as planes pass through specific air space. While air trafic controllers generally rely
on transponder data links and video monitor displays to direct aircraft, the strip boards provide useful information at a glance: flight numbers, aircraft IDs, aircraft types, and assigned altitudes and destinations. The Federal Aviation Administration is
18 NEWSMAX | MAY 2025
currently in the process of shifting to an electronic flight strip (EFS) system, already in use in most other countries, as part of its ongoing NextGen modernization program. Paper slips are not the FAA’s only problem. Three-fourths of its systems are so old that spare parts are hard to find. Also, today’s technicians often aren’t trained on how to repair these legacy technologies. According to the Government Accounting
Ofice, the age of FAA equipment is often measured in decades. Forty of the systems are more than 30 years old — six were first deployed over 60 years ago. — D.P.
AIRPORT/ANDREW HARNIK/GETTY IMAGES
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