During an interview aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “The Record,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that the incident at Newark’s airport “could happen in other places around the infrastructure. So, we are going to build a brand new air traffic control system, that’s going to take anywhere from three to four years.” But they’re also working on fixing the lines in the Newark area “to make sure we can stand up the telecom to make sure it never goes down again. And so, this takes a little bit of time. I was told it’d be eight months on the new fiber side of the telecom. I think we can get it to this summer.”
Duffy said, “We saw what happened in Newark. That could happen in other places around the infrastructure. So, we are going to build a brand new air traffic control system, that’s going to take anywhere from three to four years. But, to your question, in the Philly TRACON, which controls Newark, we’re already up there. We had a primary line that went down, and the secondary line, the redundant line, it didn’t stand up. So, we’re working on fixing that and making sure both lines, the primary and the redundant line, are working. But at the same time, we’re laying new fiber in the Philly TRACON to make sure we can stand up the telecom to make sure it never goes down again. And so, this takes a little bit of time. I was told it’d be eight months on the new fiber side of the telecom. I think we can get it to this summer. And, again, we’re going to deal with what’s happening by trying to stand up more controllers in the Philly TRACON. We’re going to get airlines together to talk about how they can reduce capacity at Newark.”
He added that a complete rebuild of the air traffic control system is also dependent on congressional money, and “We’re going to ask the Congress for all the money up front. I’ll go back and testify. They can do oversight with me. But we’re going to get the money, and, again, build — we’re going to get new radars, new radios, sensors on tarmacs, new infrastructure around telecom, going from copper to fiber, all the things that make an air traffic control system great, we’re actually going to implement here, and the space is going to be safer. But, also, Greta, more planes are flying in the air. So, we can deploy some technology that can bring us more efficiency in the airspace, which is critical on the delay front. And, again, most people, they don’t want to know who the FAA administrator is. They don’t want to know who the DOT secretary is, because everything runs well. But when you have these kind of failures, we’ve got to come out and be very clear about what’s happened in the past and where Donald Trump and Sean Duffy are going to take us in the future with the help of the Congress. And by the way, it’s going to be bipartisan. Everyone agrees we have to do this.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.