The White House and the Department of Transportation on Friday urged Congress to approve a further $30.1 billion to upgrade America's aging airports and air traffic control system — a written request from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, asking lawmakers to act swiftly in the final weeks of the year.
The money is aimed at the machinery that keeps the world's most complex airspace moving. The request seeks $10.1 billion for air traffic control modernisation, including $7.2 billion for a common automation platform and controller workstations and $2 billion for cloud computing; $2 billion to replace and improve Federal Aviation Administration control towers; and $18 billion for airport projects, including $10 billion to modernise or replace aging terminals.
“This investment is critical to complete the modernization of our national airspace – delivering a resilient telecommunications backbone for air traffic controllers, modern hardware and software, state-of-the-art control towers, and world-class airport infrastructure,” Vought and Duffy wrote to lawmakers.
The case behind the letter is written in failures. In January 2025 a midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport killed 67 people. In September, the dual failures of a circuit at a Philadelphia air traffic facility and a fiber-optic cable accidentally severed by a construction crew in New Jersey delayed or cancelled thousands of flights across the Northeast. The FAA still relies on decades-old computers and buys replacement parts through auction websites — and only last week it said the floppy disks used for weather and other critical information at more than 400 facilities will not be replaced until the end of 2028. The letter noted one measure of progress: 68 percent of the legacy copper telecommunications network has already been replaced with high-speed fiber.
Congress has already approved $12.5 billion over five years, in July 2025, to upgrade air traffic control and hire more controllers after complaints about congestion, delays and failing technology. America's biggest carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines — have expressed support for the new request.
The timing is deliberate. The administration is asking the Republican-led Congress to approve the funding in the final weeks of the year, before Democrats take control of Congress in January — the same deadline pressure now sitting on several of the White House's unfinished priorities. The request is not yet law; it needs Congress to vote it through.
For the families who fly, this is as concrete as government spending gets: controllers working on modern screens instead of floppy disks, towers that are not crumbling, terminals that can handle the crowds, and a system where one cut cable cannot strand thousands of travellers across the Northeast. Safer skies and fewer ruined journeys are the return ordinary Americans are being promised on this money.
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