The Air Current
Will Guisbond
22 August 2025
FAA Administrator anticipates final solicitation for an ATC modernization integrator will go live at the end of August
A lack of funds is hampering the Trump administration’s effort to build a “brand new” air traffic control system, forcing the Federal Aviation Administration to carefully select which aspects of the nation’s aging ATC system to fully replace and which ones to simply upgrade or refresh.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for weeks has said that fully replacing the national airspace system’s software infrastructure — which currently relies on three separate protocols — with a single “common automation platform” would be a central tenet of the administration’s modernization plan. Yet even with a record single-year injection of $12.5 billion from Congress in May, Federal Aviation Administration chief Bryan Bedford said the agency does not currently have the money to build an entirely new software system, according to a recording of an FAA town hall held earlier this month that was reviewed by The Air Current...
