US Department of Transportation - Office of Inspector General
17 July 2024
Requested by the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Subcommittee on Aviation
Project ID AV2024031
What We Looked At
The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Next Generation Air Transportation System aims to modernize the Nation’s air traffic system and provide safer and more efficient air traffic management. The Terminal Flight Data Manager (TFDM) program, an almost $1 billion part of this modernization effort, will address a top FAA and industry priority to improve airport surface operations. FAA is currently testing and implementing key TFDM capabilities at airports across the Nation, introducing electronic flight strips and surface management tools to improve efficiency at airports. Given the large investment in TFDM, as well as concerns about program deployment cost and schedule, the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and its Subcommittee on Aviation requested that we review FAA’s current implementation plan for TFDM. Specifically, we assessed FAA’s progress in implementing TFDM, including its core capabilities.
What We Found
While FAA has begun to deploy TFDM, it has experienced significant delays of nearly 3 years in its deployment. A nearly 20 percent cost increase since 2016 has also caused a reduction in deployment sites from 89 to 49; therefore, increasing the estimated cost per site while decreasing planned system consolidations and functionality. Although FAA significantly reduced the program’s scope, the Agency retained the large deployment sites that are expected to provide over 90 percent of the original anticipated monetized benefits. However, funding uncertainty will remain which could impact the number of future deployment sites. Additionally, FAA and airspace users will not realize major benefits, such as fuel and carbon emissions savings, until at least 2025 and FAA continues to face implementation risks in areas such as system integration, airline participation, future cybersecurity requirements, and air traffic controller human factors and training.
Our Recommendations
We made three recommendations to improve FAA’s TFDM program. The Agency concurred with all three of our recommendations and provided appropriate planned actions and completion dates.
