‘You want the brightest protecting yourself and your family. That’s what we’re going to do with the department,’ Sean Duffy said.
Days after the deadliest U.S. aviation accident in more than two decades, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said on Feb. 2 that many Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) systems are outdated and need to be updated amid a lingering shortage of air traffic controllers.
Speaking with Shannon Bream of “Fox News Sunday,” Duffy said that while America’s skies are still the world’s safest, the FAA’s systems are in need of major improvements.
“We have the safest skies in the whole world. Traveling by air is the safest mode of transportation,” Duffy said. “It’s not just air traffic controllers, but we do have technologies on airplanes to keep them separated. … This is the safest system.”
Duffy said that the FAA systems “need to be upgraded” and commented on the Notice to Air Missions (NOTAM) outage that delayed hundreds of flights throughout the United States on Feb. 2. NOTAM, which Duffy called “antiquated,” is a pilot warning system that notifies of weather or airspace changes before landing.Because of the FAA’s imposing a mandatory retirement age of 56 for air traffic controllers, as well