GAO

FAA Air Traffic Control Overhaul Asks Congress for $30 Billion More as GAO Finds No Reliable Cost Estimate

The Transportation Department wants another $30 billion from Congress to finish rebuilding US air traffic control, on top of the $12.5 billion it got in July 2025. GAO says the FAA still can’t show what the whole job will cost.

Secretary Sean Duffy made the request on 28 September at Reagan National Airport, the site of the January 2025 midair collision that killed 67 people and set off the push. The same day Senator Eric Schmitt introduced the Modern Skies Act to provide the money. In December 2025 the department put the figure at $20 billion. The White House’s fiscal 2027 budget didn’t ask for it through regular appropriations. Duffy has said he’d rather get it through reconciliation.

What the first $12.5 billion bought

The money came in the 2025 reconciliation law: about $9 billion for systems and $3.5 billion for facilities. It pays for new radios, voice switches, surface surveillance at airports, electronic flight strips in towers, and the replacement of copper telecoms lines with fibre. The FAA picked Peraton as prime integrator in December 2025, ahead of IBM and Parsons. Under the contract terms the FAA has described, Peraton earns a 3% fixed profit plus up to 6% more if it finishes on time and on budget. In January RTX and Indra won contracts to replace up to 612 radars by June 2028.

Progress is real but partial. By May 2026 the FAA had swapped 2,560 of 5,170 copper lines for fibre. By March it had obligated $1.8 billion, about a fifth of the money. The stated goal is to finish the core work by the end of 2028.

GAO’s warning

GAO’s report of 14 September is the most detailed outside look so far. The FAA splits the programme into two phases. Phase 1 has 13 programmes, nine of them under way, and a June 2026 cost estimate of $10.6 billion. That’s about $1.6 billion more than the systems money Congress provided. The FAA plans to cover $1 billion of the gap from fiscal 2026 funds, which leaves $574 million unfunded. Phase 2 would need about $10.2 billion more, excluding facilities, and has no start or finish date.

The bigger problem is method. The FAA Administrator, Bryan Bedford, waived the agency’s own acquisition rules for the programme to move faster. GAO found no reliable lifecycle cost estimate: the June figure has no supporting analysis and leaves out government costs, most operations and maintenance, and all of phase 2. There’s no integrated master schedule either. Instead the FAA is running 11,389 separate project schedules, which GAO says has already caused repeat site visits and conflicts between contractors. “The FAA is buying delivery speed at the risk of cost uncertainty,” the report says.

GAO recommended a proper cost estimate and an integrated schedule for phase 1. The department only partly agreed and disputes that the waiver removed the cost-estimate requirement.

The stakes aren’t abstract. GAO’s 2024 review found 51 of the FAA’s 138 air traffic systems unsustainable and another 54 potentially so.

Where the $30 billion would go

The department’s fact sheet splits the request into three $10 billion parts:

  • digital architecture, including $7.2 billion for the common automation platform controllers use to separate aircraft and $2 billion for data networks;
  • infrastructure, with $2 billion for FAA-owned towers and $8 billion in airport grants;
  • a new grant programme for “transitional hubs”, mid-sized airports with 5 million to 25 million passengers a year.

Only the first part is air traffic control in the narrow sense. The other two are airport money, which widens the coalition behind the bill. Nearly 60 groups back it, from Airlines for America to the controllers’ union.

Controllers are the other constraint

New equipment doesn’t fix staffing. The 43-day shutdown in late 2025, covered in our post on the funding year, had controllers working unpaid, and in November the FAA ordered airlines to cut flights at 40 major airports by up to 10%.

The FAA hired 2,235 trainees in fiscal 2026, a record, and plans at least 8,900 through 2028. But its 2026 workforce plan also lowered the target for fully certified controllers to 12,563, from 14,633 a year earlier, by counting trainees’ contribution in a new way. It had 10,968 certified controllers this year. A trainee takes years to certify, so most of this year’s hires won’t be working traffic alone before the 2028 deadline for the new system.

Congress broadly supports the overhaul. Many members want evidence the first $12.5 billion is on track before approving more. GAO’s report gives them a list of what’s still missing.