During Wednesday’s House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Harold Rogers (R-KY) questioned Acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau about air traffic control modernization.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Chairman Rogers.
00:06Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:08The Secretary's new state-of-the-art air traffic control system is long overdue.
00:19It seems like it's almost every other day that we're having some problem with air traffic control in this country.
00:27With souls in the air, under air care.
00:36This plan is holistic, and it's big, and it's expensive.
00:45Replacing antiquated telecommunications with new fiber, wireless, and satellite technologies at over 4,600 sites.
00:5825,000 new radios, 475 new voice switches, and so on and so forth.
01:10Replacing 618 radars, which are past their life cycle already.
01:20Addressing runway safety by increasing the number of airports with surface awareness initiative to 200.
01:28Building six new air traffic control centers for the first time since the 60s.
01:38Replacing towers and tracons.
01:42Installing new modern hardware and software for all air traffic facilities.
01:49To create a common platform system throughout towers, tracons, and centers.
01:56And then the special problems in Alaska.
02:00With adding 174 new weather stations.
02:04Just in Alaska.
02:08This is a huge undertaking.
02:11At great cost.
02:12I've got a mechanical question that Chairman Womack opened up.
02:21How are you going to do this?
02:23Are we going to build a new system separate and apart from the present system?
02:29And one day when you get the new one built, you'll switch to on and the other one to off?
02:35How's that going to work?
02:39Thank you for the question.
02:40And there is no doubt we are looking for a real investment in this.
02:46And I believe it is a true investment in the U.S. and the future.
02:51When I think of the aviation industry as an economic generator of over a trillion dollars and 10 million U.S. good paying jobs.
03:00As it relates specifically to our plan that you so well outlined.
03:04And part of that has to, a big piece of that is being able to sustain the operations we have today.
03:09As I can talk a little bit about Newark where we're transitioning from the copper wires, what with the old-fashioned telephone lines, over to fiber optic cables.
03:18That's just one example of where we're taking kind of what we have in place and we're transitioning into a new system as it relates to radars and facilities.
03:28All of those things are going to be part of this where we continue to operate the system safely every day.
03:35And then we switch over, as you described, we switch over into these new modern systems with intentional, deliberate testing to make sure the redundancy and the resiliency is there to ensure the safety of the traveling public.
03:48Would you be using some equipment under the current system?
03:51I'm sorry, what equipment?
03:53Would you be mixing in pieces from the new system to the old system and vice versa?
04:00So the whole idea is to replace the system.
04:03That is the, but eventually, but that is going to take some time to get there.
04:06And I think yesterday we issued a request for information for the best and brightest companies to come in and help us do that transition.
04:15I think that's a real opportunity for us to understand.
04:18But the plan is, as we described it earlier, is to essentially continue to operate the system as we do today and then switch over to the new technologies.
04:28So it will be all new equipment?
04:31Yes, sir.
04:32And the like?
04:33That's correct.
04:33In the new system?
04:34None of the old?
04:36No more floppy disks or paper strips.
04:39So you'll turn the switch to on and take the shovels and do away with the old system?
04:46It's a little more complicated than that, but we will switch it over to the new system.
04:51All right.
04:52Good luck.
04:52Thank you, sir.
04:54Yield back.
04:55And they'll be doing it while you're in the air, Mr. Rogers.
04:57I'm pretty confident.