President Trump attacks Obama administration over air-traffic control

Bart F Jansen | USA Today

President Trump blasted the Obama administration Monday for failing to modernize air-traffic control faster — but the Federal Aviation Administration said it has made progress.

“After billions and billions of tax dollars spent, and the many years of delays, we’re still stuck with an ancient, broken, antiquated, horrible system that doesn’t work,” Trump said in announcing his plan to move controllers from the FAA to a non-profit corporation. “Other than that it’s quite good.”

D.J. Gribbin, special assistant to the president for Infrastructure, said the corporation could borrow money to finance projects and avoid the cumbersome federal procurement process.

Trump complained that the previous administration spent $7 billion on upgrading the system without much result.

“Honestly, they didn’t know what the hell they were doing,” Trump said. “A total waste of money.”

The Government Accountability Office and the Transportation Department’s inspector general have issued reports for years critical of FAA for falling behind schedule and going over-budget on the modernization program called NextGen.

But FAA Administrator Michael Huerta has estimated that NextGen has already delivered $2.7 billion in benefits and is projected to provide $160 billion in benefits by 2030.

Much of the spending so far has built the foundation for GPS tracking with a network of stations to relay aircraft positions by satellite. Planes are required to install equipment to communicate with the network by 2020.

Airlines are already gliding to more efficient landings at some airports with new flight paths, rather than taking previous stair-step descents that burned more fuel.

Another facet of the program is to move from radio communications to text messages, for less confusion between controllers and pilots about complicated instructions. Controllers at 55 airports including Newark and Miami are already sending texts to pilots at a few airlines, such as United and UPS.

“The proposal to create a separate, non-government air traffic control service provider is a step in a process that needs to involve all users of the airspace system and deliver benefits to the system as a whole,” the FAA said Monday in a statement.

The top Democrat on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon, said FAA had huge procurement problems a decade ago, but is now making progress.

“A decade ago, I would probably would have said, yeah, let’s roll the dice,” DeFazio said. “But today the FAA is on a good path to procurement. The bottom line is this could be very disruptive.”