Trump administration wants bill to establish new air traffic control system

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Trump administration wants bill to establish new air traffic control system

The Trump administration hopes to upgrade and replace the nation’s entire air traffic control system, with President Trump saying Thursday morning that he’ll work with Congress on a bill to that end. 

Billionaire Elon Musk, a special government employee in charge of the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency task force,

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that his DOGE team will work to make “rapid safety upgrades to the air traffic control system.” On Capitol Hill Thursday morning, Mr. Trump suggested Congress should fund a completely new air traffic control system, in the wake of last week’s Blackhawk helicopter-commercial plane midair collision near Ronald Reagan National Airport that killed 67.

The president said he and congressional leaders will sit down and “do a great computerized system for our control towers, brand new,” rather than trying to improve the current system. 

“I’m going to be speaking to John (Thune) and to Mike (Johnson) and to Chuck (Schumer) and to everybody,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to get together and just as a single bill just pass, where we get the best control system.”

The president suggested the current air traffic control system is a patchwork of technology and companies, and instead, just one or two companies and one set of equipment should function throughout.

“So we’re gonna have the best system and a lot of money, but it’s not that much money, and it’ll happen fast, and it’ll be done by total professionals, and when it’s done, you’re not going to have accidents,” he added. “They’re virtually not possible to have.” 

It’s not clear how much an overhaul like that would cost, or what it would feasibly look like. 

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy also said this week the the administration is going to make sure the U.S. has the most innovative, technologically advanced air traffic control system. That’s the mission of the Federal Aviation Administration, Duffy said. 

As CBS News has previously reported, less than 10% of the nation’s airport terminal towers have enough air traffic controllers to meet a set of standards set by a working group that included the Federal Aviation Administration and the controllers’ union, according to a CBS News analysis of FAA data.

Kris Van Cleave

contributed to this report.

Kathryn Watson

Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.

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