President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy plan to ask Congress to fund a complete replacement of the United States’ air traffic control system.
At a meeting in the White House, Trump called many facets of the existing ATC system “very obsolete” and heaped blame on the administration of former President Joe Biden for, in his view, spending billions of dollars without making meaningful changes. Instead of “patching” things together, he said, the entire system will be overhauled and rebuilt.
Duffy linked the state of the country’s ATC system to the midair collision over the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people in January. An American Airlines flight preparing to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (KDCA) collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, whose crew was taking part in a training exercise.
“Our system is safe, but you would have hoped someone would have seen that there’s a problem with fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters coming in at DCA,” Duffy said. “Someone should have seen that before we lost almost 70 lives. It’s our job to look and see that we have an aging infrastructure around air traffic control. And if we don’t build a brand new system, there’s going to be failures and people will lose their lives.”
President Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy say they'll ask Congress to fund a full-scale replacement of the nation's air traffic control system. pic.twitter.com/AEsHA6q9Hf
— CSPAN (@cspan) April 30, 2025
The president also referenced the disaster and said a higher-quality system would have prevented it.
“That wouldn’t have happened if we had the right equipment,” Trump said. “If we had the right equipment you would have heard bells and whistles going off, and it would have alerted long before that would have happened. Two minutes before, there would have been a lot of time.”
Congress’ Action
Duffy indicated that the administration will have to ask Congress for the money to implement the overhaul but did not say how much he expects such an effort to cost.
The U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure recently put forward a budget plan allocating $15 billion to improve the nation’s ATC system, but it called for upgrades to specific equipment and facilities, not a rebuilding of the entire ATC network.
Trump said it would be his preference for a single contractor to handle the entire project. He suggested IBM and Raytheon as possible candidates.
