After a series of high-profile incidents at U.S. airports, the federal government is moving quickly to modernize the country’s aging air traffic control system. The price tag is $12.5 billion and artificial intelligence will play a major role.
Speaking to CBS News, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said, “AI is a tool, but we are not replacing humans in the way we manage airspace.”
When asked if AI would replace air traffic controllers, he responded: “Hell no, that’s not going to happen.”
Air traffic control is one of the most high-pressure jobs in the world, and the idea of handing that responsibility over to a machine is not something most people are comfortable with. Duffy’s position is that AI should make controllers better at their jobs, not replace them.
Artificial intelligence (AI) will be used to merge airline flight schedules with data from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to detect potential congestion problems long before they develop.
Instead of scrambling to manage delays that day, the software would flag conflicts weeks in advance and suggest small adjustments, delaying an output by five or ten minutes, which would hopefully help prevent bottlenecks from forming in the first place.
Duffy said, “This software will say, ‘We can look at this in 45 days. Let’s move some of those flights a little bit later, or five, seven, ten minutes earlier, and we can solve the problem.’ And then you won’t have any delays.”
Last year, the US Congress approved $12.5 billion for air traffic control improvements through the Big Beautiful Bill.
The Transportation Department says it has already replaced nearly half of all copper wiring systemwide, upgraded about 270 radio sites, installed new surface recognition technology at 54 airports to help controllers track planes on the ground, and moved 17 flight runway towers from paper to electronic systems.
But the AI software itself has not yet been funded. Estimates put its cost between $6 billion and $10 billion, meaning Congress will have to act again before that part of the plan can move forward.
Duffy directly acknowledged the human element, saying, “We have humans navigating, managing the airspace, and as humans we can make mistakes. That’s why I want to provide additional tools to support air traffic controllers.”
