Duffy Asks Congress for $30 Billion to Rebuild US Air Traffic System

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has called on Congress to approve an additional $30 billion to modernise the country's ageing air traffic control system and airports, saying decades-old technology is driving flight disruptions and may not cope with rising air travel.

Speaking at a news conference at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Duffy said the fresh funding would build on the $12.5 billion Congress approved about a year and a half ago for the Federal Aviation Administration's modernisation drive. He had earlier put the total cost of the upgrades at roughly $30 billion.

Under the Modern Skies Act, the money would be split into three tranches of $10 billion each. The first would replace the underlying telecommunications architecture, which Duffy described as dating to the 1980s and relying on redundant lines routed through a single point of failure.

The second tranche would go towards airport infrastructure, with many control towers built in the 1960s and 1970s now showing their age. Duffy noted that some air traffic controllers work in towers with leaking roofs.

The third $10 billion is intended for airports themselves. Large airports can more easily tap private capital, issue bonds or self-fund upgrades, Duffy said, whereas midsize airports struggle to access capital. He argued the country should have state-of-the-art airports.

Duffy framed the request as a bipartisan cause, saying aviation is one area where Washington broadly agrees, and urged lawmakers to act rather than wait for conditions to worsen. "If you don't want to do it now, when do you want to do it?" he said, asking when Americans would grow tired enough of delays, cancellations and outdated infrastructure to back the investment.

He also acknowledged past scepticism in Congress, pointing to the NextGen modernisation effort about 30 years ago, which received an estimated $10-15 billion but delivered, in his words, virtually nothing. That history, he said, had made lawmakers reluctant to trust new funding requests, though he added that they had backed the FAA with $12.5 billion previously.

The appeal comes a week after a telecommunications glitch at an FAA facility in Philadelphia disrupted thousands of flights across the Northeast. A primary communications line failed and a backup fibre-optic line was accidentally severed, triggering ground stops and widespread delays and cancellations at airports including Newark, Philadelphia and New York's LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International.

It also follows the January 2025 midair collision at Reagan National Airport between an American Airlines passenger jet and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter, which killed all 67 people aboard the two aircraft — 64 passengers on the commercial flight and three soldiers. In December 2025, the federal government acknowledged that failures by the helicopter pilots and a controller in the airport tower contributed to the crash.