With jet engines roaring behind him, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy vouched for Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” Thursday at the base of the air traffic control tower at San Diego International Airport.
According to Duffy, a complete overhaul of America’s air traffic control system would ensure the safety of millions of daily passengers and must be completed within three to four years.
“This can’t take a decade, this can’t take six years,” Duffy said at the press conference. “We have to move now and move fast.”
Franklin McIntosh, a former air traffic controller and chief operating officer of Air Traffic Organization — the operational branch of the Federal Aviation Administration — said the technology used by air traffic controllers is “antiquated.”
“I know firsthand how critical it is for our nation’s controllers to have reliable and resilient equipment at their disposal,” McIntosh said.
Duffy said hardware and software improvements in the tower at the San Diego airport — the busiest single-runway airport in the U.S. — will be paid for by President Donald Trump’s bill, formally known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”
The version of the bill that passed the House distributes more than $12 billion for air traffic control tower modernization and other airport infrastructure.
While the bill may look different after Senate deliberations, projects upgrading telecommunications infrastructure receive $4.75 billion and $3 billion goes towards replacing radar systems.
Duffy said he worked with Verizon on an infrastructure project after outages in April and May left Newark Airport air traffic controllers unable to locate planes or talk to pilots.
Verizon installed a fiber-optics cable linking the Newark tower to a regional control center in Philadelphia in three weeks, Duffy said.
“Everyone who has participated in what we’re doing now is at the CEO level,” Duffy said. “Because they understand how important this is to America.”
Duffy said the airport infrastructure projects are not exempted from environmental impact analyses required by the National Environmental Policy Act — and that is not affected by the tax and spending bill. He wants that to change.
“If there’s a supplemental bill that comes, I’m going to ask the congress to waive NEPA requirements,” Duffy said.
According to Duffy, it is of national importance to build control towers and install fiber-optic cables. Without environmental reviews these projects would be completed faster.
Duffy said it is hard for the FAA to plan, and that the agency — which is a part of the Department of Transportation — does not have the best contracts to get upgrades done on budget and on time.
While Congress sometimes “spends money like drunken sailors,” Duffy said, his department wants to execute a single plan to modernize air traffic safety systems nationwide with the $12-plus billion in Trump’s bill.
“This is why we’re asking for all the money up front, and if not all of it, as much as possible,” Duffy said.
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