FAA will build air traffic control system that can be 'updated like your iPhone'

US President Donald Trump and US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, along with at least a dozen major airline aviation CEOs on Thursday, announce a new plan to “completely rebuild and modernize” the nation’s air traffic control system.

The Secretary said the time has come to finally address the FAA’s antiquated technology infrastructure and the intermittent systemwide failures that have been plaguing the aviation industry for years.

The new state-of-the-art air traffic control (ATC) coordination centers will be a complete overhaul from the current “50-year-old [technology] that our controllers use to scan the skies and keep airplanes separated from one another,” Duffy said.

“We've had years of neglect, decades of neglect. It's been a patchwork of fixes and partial funding. And the plan to do a brand new redo of air traffic control has never existed,” Duffy said.

“This is not partisan politics. This is about the safety of the American people,” Duffy posted on X after the announcement, adding, “We want to rip this system out and send it to the Smithsonian.”

Duffy actually brought an old-school floppy disc with him to physically show the crowd how outdated ATC equipment really is. “No more replacing floppy disks and other antiquated parts so old you can only find them on eBay,” he posted, referring to the FAA's admitted and currently in-use process to repair its archaic equipment.

No more replacing floppy disks and other antiquated parts so old you can only find them on eBay.

It’s time for a brand new air traffic control system that makes our country proud.

Thank you @POTUS for your leadership! Now it’s time to get to work and make American air travel… pic.twitter.com/dn3RqTx9kr

undefined Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) May 9, 2025

President Donald Trump, who was not in attendence for security reasons, joined the press conference by phone at one point, telling the crowd of 200 gathered at the US Department of Transportation headquarters in Washington, DC, that the federal government currently pays “$250 million annually just to keep up the old equipment, keep it running.”

“The equipment on most airplanes in the sky is now generations ahead of the ground systems,” the President said, giving a special acknowledgement to the victims of the deadly mid-air collision over Reagan Airport in January, many of whose family members were at the event.

Caused by a loss of communication with the Reagan control tower, the fatal accident between an American Airlines flight and a US military Black Hawk helicopter, which took 63 lives with no survivors, was repeatedly recognized by those at the podium as the root catalyst for the new ATC initiative and its condensed three to four year timeline.

Additionally cited was the ongoing chaos at Newark Liberty International Airport – in which another 30 to 90 second-long communication blackout between the tower and overhead flights last week resulted in traumatized controllers temporarily walking off the job and hundreds of flights being canceled or delayed at the nation’s busiest hub.

A 20-page report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released just one month before the DC crash warned that more than a third of America’s 138 air traffic control (ATC) systems were “outdated, unsustainable, and lack spare parts.”

New ATC system will be updatable 'like your iPhone'

Currently, the ATC system uses copper wire instead of fiber, radar systems from the 1970s and 80s, and air traffic controllers who are in the tower are looking out with binoculars to see airplanes, it was explained.

Along with a new flight management system to bring efficiency to the airspace, Duffy boasted of new telecom and fiber throughout the system, brand new radios in the towers to communicate between air traffic controllers and airplanes, and new ground radar sensors on our tarmacs and at our airports.

“All the front-facing equipment for controllers, all the back-end systems for controllers, all brand new, all new hardware, all new software, is going to be built into this brand new air traffic control system,” he added.

Embrace the future, it’s time to leave the outdated behind!

We're launching a new era of air traffic control. We're building a fully modern system from the ground up, upgrading the backbone of American aviation with cutting-edge technology that enhances safety and reduces… pic.twitter.com/TOVlfXPdJd

undefined U.S. Department of Transportation (@USDOT) May 8, 2025

Comparing the current system to a flip phone, the Transportation Secretary said the new cutting-edge, state-of-the-art system will be like your iPhone. “You can actually get updates. You can build on top of what we are going to have in place. So as new technology becomes available, we can actually deploy it.”

The announcement additionally touched upon the need for safe, efficient, and manageable airspace to accommodate not only the carriers in the air today – including military, emergency services, and fire-fighting aircraft – but the influx of new technologically advanced transportation modalities.

“More planes are in the air now than ever. We're going to add ‘EVTOLs’ [Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft]. These are the Ubers in the air, the drones with people in them, as well as drones themselves into the airspace. It's going to become more complicated,” Duffy said.

The FAA initiative will include a push to train at least 3,000 more air traffic controllers on the brand new technology to fill a decade long shortage of controllers.

A new "Modern Skies Coalition," made up of over 50 organizations of all types of airports, manufacturers, labor, general aviation, airlines, commercial space, and others, was also announced as a major stakeholder in the initiative.

Trump, who has mentioned IBM and Raytheon Technologies as top contenders for contracts last week, said negotiations were already taking place "with various companies."