US Plans $30 Billion ATC Overhaul After Outage

After a telecommunications failure disrupted air traffic across the Northeast, delaying or canceling about 9,500 flights and diverting more than 100, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the administration will ask Congress for an additional $30 billion to modernize the aviation system. The proposal would allocate roughly $10 billion each to air-traffic-control facilities, communications and other technology, and airport infrastructure. The outage resulted from a failure in a primary communications circuit and damage to a backup fiber-optic connection, exposing vulnerabilities at airports including Newark, JFK, LaGuardia and Philadelphia. The request would supplement the $12.5 billion Congress approved in 2025 for FAA modernization, bringing proposed federal investment to about $42.5 billion. Planned upgrades include replacing obsolete copper lines, aging radar and radio systems, and outdated voice switches while adding redundant communications routes and digital surveillance intended to prevent a similar failure from cascading across the network.