Vice President JD Vance said the United States’ air traffic control (ATC) systems are outdated and must be upgraded following the rise in close calls in recent years and the two deadly air tragedies that struck the U.S. in the past week.
During an exclusive interview with FOX News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” host Maria Bartiromo asked the vice president what could be done about the shortage of air traffic controllers as well as the use of traffic management systems that are decades-old while America’s allies utilize more modern technology.
“The software point is really important, though, because we know if you look at these old, antiquated air traffic control systems, it really does look like a video game. It’s 30 years old. We’ve got better software,” Vance said. “We need a federal government that’s more responsive to the technology that’s out there. And I really do think that with President Trump’s leadership, we’re going to have those near-misses and those almost terrible tragedies – those are going to come down, which means our aviation system is going to be much safer.”
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The vice president’s statements come after two aviation disasters happened in the U.S., including the collision of a military Black Hawk helicopter with an American Airlines jet in Washington, D.C., last week. A private plane also plummeted out of the sky in Pennsylvania on Friday.
A report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in September warned that the FAA urgently needed to upgrade its ATC systems, pointing out that the year before, the GAO flagged that 51 of the FAA’s 138 systems are “unsustainable.”
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“Over half of these unsustainable systems are especially concerning, but FAA has been slow to modernize,” the GAO report states. “Some system modernization projects won’t be complete for another 10-13 years. FAA also doesn’t have plans to modernize other systems in need—3 of which are at least 30 years old.”
The Trump administration, which has been in office for two weeks, has vowed to make the necessary upgrades to the systems.
Newly confirmed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream over the weekend that America’s skies remain the safest in the world, but he also said major changes could be made to improve the FAA’s systems.
“We have the safest skies in the whole world. Traveling by air is the safest mode of transportation,” Duffy said. “It’s not just air traffic controllers, but we do have technologies on airplanes to keep them separated. So, yeah, no, this is the safest system.”
Duffy went on to say that the U.S. system “does need to be upgraded.” He also noted an outage of the FAA’s pilot warning system, the “Notice to Air Mission” or NOTAM system, on Saturday night, calling it “antiquated.”
FOX News Digital’s Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
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