Concerns regarding the FAA flight safety system come back from decades

Federal Watchdogs have expressed concerns about the Federal Aviation Administration Aviation Control System for decades.

In the weeks since the fatal plane crash on the Potomac river near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, said Dot Secretary Sean Duffy, who hopes to use a “brand new air traffic control system” within the next four years.

“That should have happened 15 years ago four years ago, 10 years ago,” said Duffy. “At the moment we are at a point where we can actually do it, and we can do it very quickly again.”

The Red flags in relation to the treatment of flight control matters by FAA have taken on Republican and Democratic administrations for more than 30 years.

In 1990, Kenneth Mead, director of government supply balance, told a congress under committee that the FAA had made progress, but the agency “had inexperience in the development of large-scale, highly automated systems” and “still had problems with the modernization of the ATC system”, although it still had problems with the modernization of the ATC system “.

“Given the enormous levels of F& E (facilities and devices) that have been forecast for the next few years is important that FAA the congress, the aviation community and the flying public that will lead to continuous and future activities to demonstrable improvements, “added Mead at this time.

The changes may have been said more easily than done.

“The planned improvements in security and capacity have delayed, and the costs that have the maintenance of existing technologies and the replacement of outdated ATC systems and infrastructures,” stated a GAO committee from 2005, in which cultural, technical and budgetary factors were restricted or impaired.

“The FAA no longer sees its modernization program as a multi -year initiative with a defined end. Rather, the program sees it as an ongoing investment in technological progress to improve the security and capacity of aviation,” said the body.

The office of the General Inspector of the U.S. Transport Ministry, which conducts investigations into DOT departments such as the FAA, the Federal Railway Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, has immersed them several times in the treatment of ATC matters of the FAA.

General reports from Inspector in 2008 and 2012 showed that the physical conditions of many ATC facilities deteriorated, with problems ranging from “poor furnishing design” to water leaks and ventilation problems.

In the 2008 IG report, the FAA was expected to implement the implementation of its air traffic system for the next generation by 2025. The GAO released on its website at the beginning of this month that was “mixed progress” with the implementation of Nextgen.

The investigation into the FAA has continued over the years.

In 2015, the IG comprised the tower on the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on the list of “often the least efficient” airport towers with a large hub.

Less than two years later, the IG recognized some improvements in the FAA compared to its emergency plans, but found that their ATC facilities are not yet fully prepared to react effectively to important system disorders, partly due to the lack of necessary controller training for this type of emergency event. “

By 2023, the concerns about the line -up in the FAA ATC centers made headlines.

“The FAA has only made limited efforts to ensure a reasonable personnel worker in critical flight control facilities,” said the IG at this point and pointed out that the Washington Center of the FAA was 21 traffic management coordinators but had 13 instead, while the facility was justified for 36 operational supervisory authorities, but instead 25.

One of the federal investigative reports before the deadly collision of the Potomac in September 2024. The GAO gave the GAO seven recommendations, including the request to the agency, to report to the congress about how it deals with risks that dealt with “non -sustainable and critical systems”.

The FAA “has slowly modernized the most critical and endangered systems,” said the GAO at the time. “About a third of the FAA -ATC systems are not considered sustainable.”

Josh Margolin, Sam Sweeney and Ayesha Ali from ABC News contributed to this report.