How DOGE can make smart, safe air traffic control reforms

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is set to review America’s aging air traffic control system, according to a recent X post from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, saying DOGE was “going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.”

Big News – Talked to the DOGE team. They are going to plug in to help upgrade our aviation system.

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) February 5, 2025

The announcement provoked concern and Democratic outrage: “The last thing I want is that guy trying to control the airspace,” Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) told reporters.

“I think it’s petrifying to the American people, especially after we just suffered another horrific tragedy here in Washington, D.C.,” Rep. Tim Kennedy (D-N.Y.) told Politico. “Now is not the time to put someone with zero experience in dealing with our national air traffic controllers into any position of authority.”

But Musk’s promised “rapid safety upgrades,” if done wisely, are badly needed. The Jan. 29 midair collision over Washington, DC, which killed 67 people and is currently under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, is the most recent example of the need to improve the American air traffic control system. Other mishaps include a Jan. 2023 outage of the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) critical pilots’ warning system, which disrupted more than 11,000 flights across the country—the first nationwide incident of this kind since Sept. 11, 2001. Largely as a result of insufficient staff, inexperienced pilots and aging technology, 2023 also saw the highest number of near-collisions at airports since 2016.

Such failures are widespread. A June 2023 report from the Transportation Department’s Office of Inspector General found that 77% of the aviation system’s most critical facilities had controller staffing shortages. That November, a team of senior aviation officials submitted a report to the FAA revealing antiquated facilities, imprudent technology decisions, and staffing shortages.

A Sept. 2024 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report found that 105 of the FAA’s 138 traffic-control systems were unsustainable or potentially unsustainable. The report took pains not to identify these systems by name “due to sensitivity concerns.”

The first step to solving these problems is huge capital investment. However, federal law effectively prevents the FAA from issuing long-term revenue bonds, instead requiring it to rely entirely on annual appropriations for funding. By contrast, Canada’s air traffic control system, which can directly issue revenue bonds, uses the money to modernize its systems rapidly by replacing large amounts of equipment at once—rather than making incremental purchases each year.

In the U.S., modernization can take a decade or more. The aviation system in America is a slow-moving civil service bureaucracy. The FAA should employ world-class program managers, engineers, and software geniuses to design new air-traffic control systems. Instead, it has shifted the responsibility of developing many new systems to aerospace contractors, who often design overly complex, time-consuming, and costly systems.

Canada’s aviation system, conversely, streamlines the process by developing prototype systems in-house, putting them through initial testing, and then hiring an outside firm to produce them.

Another serious problem is governance. In many other countries, the air traffic control provider directly charges customers—namely airlines and commercial operators—for its services. Not so in the United States. The FAA’s operational arm, the Air Traffic Organization, relies on taxes, as well as fees already baked into ticket and fuel costs. It also reports to the FAA administrator, transportation secretary, inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, and multiple congressional committees. The Air Traffic Organization’s de facto customer is the government, not the aircraft operators using its services.

Furthermore, since 2001, international aviation policy has called for organizational separation between aviation operators and air safety regulators. However, in the U.S., the FAA operates air traffic control and regulates aviation safety—an inherent conflict of interest.

America’s air traffic control system is decades behind those of Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. While these nations build safer, cheaper, and more effective digital air traffic control towers that can be stationed off-site, the FAA continues to build the traditional air traffic control towers of years past.

While American control tower staff share flight information with each other via paper flight strips, other countries use electronic flight strips with interactive displays and real-time data. Other providers subscribe to a global space-based surveillance system to track aircraft where there is no radar, such as over the oceans. The FAA doesn’t.

The solution is for the United States to make air traffic control a public utility. New Zealand was the first to do so in 1987 when it separated its system from its Transport Ministry and converted it to Airways New Zealand—a government-owned yet self-supporting commercial entity. Today, more than 60 countries have air traffic control systems that are public utilities funded by user fees, allowing them to generate money quickly, update their technology and hire skilled staff, all while being directly accountable to customers.

Efforts by the U.S. to follow suit haven’t succeeded. In 1994, the Department of Transportation (DOT), inspired by Airways New Zealand, released a study recommending that air traffic control shift from the FAA to a new U.S. Air Traffic Services Corp., a public utility that would collect user fees and issue revenue bonds. The plan was introduced in the House in 1995 but failed to pass due to opposition from aviation interests and lawmakers who wanted to maintain oversight and appropriations authority.

A similar effort emerged in 2016. With support from the Business Roundtable, airlines, many former FAA and Department of Transportation officials, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), and some pilots’ unions, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved a bill to create a private corporation to manage the air traffic control system. The legislation failed to progress beyond that committee.

In 2017, a revised version of the bill, endorsed by President Donald Trump, again passed the House committee. However, fierce lobbying by aviation associations and private plane groups, as well as congressional opposition, led to its failure.

It’s good news that Mr. Musk has been invited to review the nation’s aging, ailing air traffic control system. But I caution DOGE not to expect quick fixes without structural and governance changes. The next FAA reauthorization bill in Congress is due in less than four years. This is the window in which the aviation industry and the Trump administration must build a bipartisan coalition to remove the Air Traffic Organization from the FAA and reconceive it as a customer-funded public utility, like its counterparts worldwide. Only then will the country’s air traffic control system be able to bring its facilities into the 21st century and preempt future disasters.

A version of this column first appeared in The Wall Street Journal.

The post How DOGE can make smart, safe air traffic control reforms appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Source: https://reason.org/commentary/how-elon-musk-can-bring-air-traffic-under-control/