By Alexandra Skores

Washington, DC (CNN) — The Department of Transportation will build a “brand new air traffic control system” by 2028, Secretary Sean Duffy announced Thursday.

The unveiling of the three-year plan follows more than a week of meltdowns at Newark Liberty International Airport after approach air traffic controllers’ screens went blank and radios went silent on April 28, causing at least five controllers to take trauma leave.

The new plan will replace “core” infrastructure, which includes radar, software, hardware and telecommunications networks, including the copper wiring that failed impacting flights at Newark.

“Decades of neglect have left us with an outdated system that is showing its age,” Duffy said in a news release. “Building this new system is an economic and national security necessity, and the time to fix it is now.”

It’s a first step toward a new direction for an antiquated system that’s had decades of problems with aging infrastructure, failing technology and is combatting an ongoing shortage of controllers. Multiple prior administrations had proposed changes, but today’s controllers still deal with age-old issues.

Today’s plan addresses four critical infrastructure parts: communications, surveillance, automation and facilities. By 2028, over 4,600 sites will get new high-speed network connections replacing antiqued telecommunications lines with fiber, wireless and satellite links, the department said.

Over 25,000 new radios and 475 new voice switches will be deployed, which the DOT says will maintain controller-pilot communications and reduce delays.

The DOT is also replacing 618 radars, which the department says are past their life cycle, by 2027.

Six new air traffic control centers will also be built for the first time since the 1960s, and the rate at which control towers are replaced will be increased.

The proposal also expands surface awareness initiative technology, which aims to help mitigate close calls on the ground, to 200 airports. The DOT currently plans to have the technology at 50 airports by the end of the year.

The DOT also will add 174 new weather stations in Alaska to address issues there, and by 2028 the department hopes the Alaska Flight Service system will operate more like the system in the continental US.

“Today is actually a historic day, I think, for the FAA and the United States air traffic control system,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby told CNN Thursday morning. “The bill… really leaves me the most optimistic I’ve been in my entire career that we’re finally going to get air traffic control modernized and fixed.”

When asked whether he thought Duffy’s assessment that the project could be completed in three to four years was too optimistic, Kirby said the involvement of Duffy and his team could make it happen faster “than the normal pace of government.”

“Secretary Duffy is action oriented,” Kirby said. “Having people that know how to get stuff done instead of just talk about policy, I think is going to be the key.”

The Transportation Department’s expected announcement would come a day after the FAA said it was “taking immediate steps to improve the reliability of operations at Newark.”

The FAA said it would add three new, high-bandwidth, telecommunications connections and replace that copper wire with fiberoptic technology to bring data to the controllers. The Philadelphia Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) – the facility involved in the April 28 incident – will also have a temporary backup system deployed. The Philadelphia facility, in part, guides aircraft approaching Newark Airport before it hands off the planes to the airport tower, and guides planes that have just departed the airport.

Staffing will also be increased, the FAA added, and there is a “healthy pipeline” of training classes filled through next July.

For years, the FAA’s technology has been under fire for its poor quality and problems.

According to a 2024 report from the US Government Accountability Office, an assessment of the FAA’s 138 systems found 51 were unsustainable and 54 were potentially unsustainable.

On Monday, the FAA released a statement: “We are working to ensure the current telecommunications equipment is more reliable in the New York area by establishing a more resilient and redundant configuration with the local exchange carriers. In addition, we are updating our automation system to improve resiliency.”

The FAA also confirmed some of the Philadelphia TRACON controllers who worked on Newark arrivals and departures have taken time off to recover from the stress of the outages. Fast replacements are impossible due to the nature of the job and how specialized it is, but the FAA says it is currently training more controllers through a “supercharged” method.

Years of tech issues

There have been many high-profile issues with FAA technology over the years that have prompted safety concerns.

In 2023, a system that provides pilots with pre-flight safety notices experienced an outage, leading to thousands of cancellations and delays. The NOTAM, Notice to Airmen, is separate from the air traffic control system that keeps planes a safe distance from each other, but it’s another critical tool for air safety.

The FAA conducted an operational risk assessment following the outage, ultimately determining the number of systems that were at risk. Of the 105 unsustainable and potentially unsustainable systems, 58 have critical operational impacts on the safety and efficiency of the national airspace, the GAO found.

Other incidents have shown different vulnerabilities in the air traffic control system. In 2014, an FAA contract employee set a fire to sabotage the FAA Chicago En Route Center in Aurora, Illinois. The facility was not able to control air traffic for more than two weeks and thousands of flights were delayed or canceled, an FAA audit found. When firefighters arrived, they found him lying on the floor and slicing his throat with a knife, an FBI affidavit said.

Katie Thomson, the former deputy administrator at the FAA during the Biden administration, said the FAA was planning to transition to new equipment last year after years of being reliant on legacy communication systems.

“Think of traditional analog communication systems that are aging and, in many cases, very expensive to fix or not being fixed by the local telecom companies,” Thomson said.

There’s a FAA Enterprise Network Services Program, also known as FENS, a contract that is supposed to acquire telecommunications services, information management services and other specialized services. The FAA awarded this 15-year contract on March 27, 2023.

Verizon currently has a massive $2.4 billion contract to provide long sought-after upgrades to the communications system. Elon Musk took to X earlier this year to criticize Verizon’s efforts to upgrade the system, calling it “putting air traveler safety at serious risk,” and hinting his company, Starlink, should take over those efforts.

Verizon spokesman Rich Young told CNN the contract is in “the process of being rolled out” and would include a new fiberoptic network, replacing the FAA system’s outdated copper lines.

The FAA told CNN in a statement it is currently testing Starlink at “non-safety critical sites in Alaska to restore stable access to weather information for pilots and the FAA’s flight services stations.”

There are 17 Starlink connections being tested by the FAA’s Telecommunications Infrastructure program, managed through a contract with L3 Harris, including two in Atlantic City, seven in Alaska and eight in Oklahoma, according to the FAA.

At a news conference Monday, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York called the technology “old.”

“It was one of the things that happened at Newark is a copper wire burnt,” Schumer said. “Why are we using copper wire in 2025? Have they heard of fiber?”

A move for air traffic controllers managing the Newark approach

While outdated technology is a talking point, some of the current problems with the Newark airspace stem from a decision last summer to move approach controllers from a Long Island facility called N90 to Philadelphia.

Then in August, according to an FAA statement, the FAA slowed flights into and out of Newark Airport because of radar feed and frequency issues.

“The reason that the FAA moved the Newark airspace to Philadelphia was because of chronic problems at N90, meaning we were unable to recruit, retain, train air traffic controllers who wanted to stay at N90,” Thomson said. “There was notoriously bad morale.”

Thomson said the FAA had even tried to give monetary incentives, but nothing had worked, resulting in significant delays and sometimes shutdowns in the Northeast corridor at those airports because of insufficient staffing.

According to a published pay scale on the FAA website, an academy graduate in New York starts at $64,230 and certified controllers make a maximum of $225,700. In Philadelphia, academy graduates start at $60,058 and certified controllers make a maximum of $225,700.

The main issue impacting controllers, Thomson believes, is the outdated technology.

“You’re seeing an acceleration of the sort of decay in the older systems that is resulting in these glitchy radar screens that at Newark,” Thomson said. “They are most extreme at Newark, but they’re happening in other places across the system.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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