Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy outlined a series of short- and long-term initiatives to address the "burning issues" plaguing the country’s airspace, telling Newsmax on Tuesday that the Trump administration will rebuild the entire infrastructure with bipartisan support.
In the long term, Duffy said the administration is going to build a new Air Traffic Control system. In the short term, new fiber is being laid to fix the problems that have plagued Newark International Airport for the past week. That fiber will be installed at Philadelphia International Airport, the Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) for four states, including New Jersey.
Duffy joined "The Record With Greta Van Susteren" to say that nobody should be "surprised" by what’s happening in Newark.
"This has been a burning issue over the course of the last decade, but specifically over the last four years," Duffy said. "We saw what happened in New York. That could happen in other places around the infrastructure. So we are going to build a brand new air traffic control system; that's going to take anywhere from 3 to 4 years.
"[I]n the Philly TRACON, which controls Newark, we're already up there. We had a primary line that went down and the secondary line, the redundant line, it didn't stand up. So we're working on fixing that and making sure both lines, the primary and the redundant line, are working," he added. "But at the same time we're laying new fiber in the Philly TRACON to make sure we can stand up the telecom to make sure it never goes down again."
Duffy told Van Susteren he thinks the new fiber can be installed by summer. Also at play is a shortage of roughly 3,000 Air Traffic controllers.
"[W]e're going to deal with what's happening by trying to stand up more controllers in the Philly TRACON. We're going to get airlines together to talk about how they can reduce capacity at Newark. So if you go to the airport, you're not going to be delayed for four hours. You're not going to be canceled," he said.
Duffy said the key part is getting the money from Congress, adding, "it's going to be bipartisan; everyone agrees we have to do this."
"Here's the problem: Prior Congresses have given small tranches of money to the FAA, and there hasn't been big, bold vision to build something brand new. We're going to ask the Congress for all the money up front," Duffy said. "We're going to get the money.
"And again, we’re gonna get new radars, new radios, sensors on tarmacs, new infrastructure around telecom, going from copper to fiber. All the things that make an air traffic control system great, we're actually going to implement here."
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