DOT seeks $50 billion to fix aging FAA systems

Friday's ground stop exposed critical weakness

The Federal Aviation Administration halted departures across the US on Friday as a safety precaution. The disruption delayed roughly ten thousand flights and canceled nearly five thousand.

Aging technology caused the outage

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the US has old switches and old routers that became overloaded with data and failed, disrupting communications at multiple air-route traffic-control centers.

DOT demands fifty billion dollars

Duffy repeatedly said the administration needs fifty billion dollars to replace hardware and software dating to the nineteen eighties. The system can no longer handle the volume of data moving through it.

“We need one complete system. We need someone to come in and build the whole system.”

Duffy calls on Congress to act

Duffy told lawmakers America deserves better. He asked how many times the failure must happen before Congress provides the money to fix the very real problem.

“How many times does this have to happen before Congress gives the money to fix it?”