(WASHINGTON) — Federal watchdogs have raised concerns about the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control system for decades, an ABC News analysis of government reports found.
In the weeks since the fatal plane crash over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA is hoping to deploy a “brand-new air traffic control system” within the next four years.
“This should have happened four years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Duffy said. “Right now, we’re at a point where we can actually do it, and we can do it really fast again.”
Red flags regarding the FAA’s handling of air traffic control matters have spanned Republican and Democratic administrations for more than 30 years.
In 1990, Government Accountability Office Transportation Issues Director Kenneth Mead told a congressional subcommittee that although the FAA had made progress, the agency had “inexperience in developing large-scale, highly automated systems” and was “still experiencing problems in modernizing the ATC system.”
“In light of the tremendous levels of F&E [facilities and equipment] funding projected for the next few years, it is crucial that FAA show[s] the Congress, the aviation community, and the flying public that ongoing and future activities will result in demonstrable improvements,” Mead added at the time.
The modifications may have been easier said than done.
“Planned improvements in safety and capacity have been delayed, and the costs, both of maintaining existing technologies and of replacing outdated ATC systems and infrastructure, have grown,” a 2005 GAO panel found, noting that cultural, technical and budgetary factors constrained or impeded ATC modernization.
“FAA no longer sees its modernization program as a multiyear initiative with a defined end; rather, it now sees the program as an ongoing investment in technological advances designed to improve aviation safety and capacity,” the panel explained.
The Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Transportation, which conducts investigations at DOT divisions such as the FAA, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, took a deep dive into the FAA’s handling of ATC matters multiple times.
Inspector general reports in 2008 and 2012 found that the physical conditions of many ATC facilities were deteriorating, with issues ranging from “poor facility design” to water leaks and ventilation problems.
The 2008 IG report mentioned that the FAA was expected to finish implementing its Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, by 2025. The GAO posted on its website earlier this month that there was “mixed progress” with NextGen’s implementation.
As the years went on, the investigations into the FAA continued.
In 2015, the IG included the tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on its list of “frequently least efficient” large hub airport towers.
Less than two years later, the IG recognized some improvements made by the FAA to its contingency plans, but found that their ATC facilities “are not yet fully prepared to respond effectively to major system disruptions, in part because of a lack of necessary controller training for these types of emergency events.”
By 2023, concerns over staffing at FAA ATC centers were making headlines.
“FAA has made limited efforts to ensure adequate controller staffing at critical air traffic control facilities,” the IG found at the time, pointing out that the FAA’s Washington Center was authorized to have 21 traffic management coordinators but instead had 13, while the facility was authorized to have 36 operational supervisors but instead had 25.
One of the final federal investigative reports prior to the fatal collision over the Potomac came in September 2024. The GAO made seven recommendations to the FAA, including calling on the agency to report to Congress on how it was handling risks involving “unsustainable and critical systems.”
The FAA “has been slow to modernize the most critical and at-risk systems,” the GAO said at the time. “About one third of FAA ATC systems are considered unsustainable.”
ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Sam Sweeney and Ayesha Ali contributed to this report.
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