We still don’t know what mistakes led to the disaster at Reagan National Airport that killed 67 last week.
But one thing has been clear for decades: America’s air-traffic control system, once the world’s most advanced, is an international disgrace.
Long before the Obama and Biden administrations’ quest to diversify staff in control towers, the system was already one of the worst in the developed world.
The recent rash of near-collisions is the result of chronic mismanagement that has left the system with too few controllers using absurdly antiquated technology.
The problems were obvious 20 years ago, when I visited control towers in both Canada and the United States.
The Canadians sat in front of sleek computer screens that instantly handled tasks like transferring the oversight of a plane from one controller to another.
The Americans were still using pieces of paper called flight strips.
After a plane took off, the controller in charge of the local airspace had to carry that plane’s flight strip over to the desk of the controller overseeing the regional airspace.
It felt like going back in time from a modern newsroom into a scene from “The Front Page.”
It was bad enough to see such outdated technology in 2005.
But they’re still using those paper flight strips in American towers, and the Federal Aviation Administration’s modernization plans have been delayed so many times that the strips aren’t due to be phased out until 2032.
The rest of the system is similarly archaic.
The United States is way behind Europe in using satellites to guide and monitor planes, forcing pilots and controllers to rely on much less precise readings from radio beacons and ground-based radar.
Overseas controllers use high-resolution cameras and infrared sensors to monitor planes on runways, but many American controllers still have to look out the window — which is why a FedEx cargo plane almost landed on top of a passenger jet two years ago in Austin, Tex.
It was a foggy morning, and the controller couldn’t see that a Southwest airliner was on the same runway waiting to take off.
At the last minute, the FedEx pilot aborted the landing, missing the other plane by less than 100 feet.
The basic problem, which reformers have been trying to remedy since the Clinton administration, is that the system is operated by a cumbersome federal bureaucracy — the same bureaucracy that’s also responsible for overseeing air safety.
The FAA is supposed to be a watchdog, but we’ve put it in charge of watching itself.
Nearly all other developed countries sensibly separate these roles, so that a federal aviation agency oversees an independent corporation that operates the control towers and the rest of the system.
This independent operator can be a state-owned company (as in Australia and Switzerland), a nonprofit corporation (as in Canada), or a company with private investors (as in the United Kingdom and Italy).
In 2017, the Trump administration tried to create a similar system in the United States, operated by a not-for-profit corporation.
The bill was backed by some Democrats and even the union representing air-traffic controllers, which had previously helped block reform but finally decided enough was enough.
But the bill went nowhere, because many legislators wanted to retain Congress’ control over the system — and the campaign contributions that came with it.
Now, after the Washington collision, could the second Trump administration and a new Republican Congress finally create a state-of-the-art system?
“The public and opinion leaders now know a lot more about the FAA’s shortcomings,” says Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, a leader of the reform campaign.
“With DOGE and the Trump administration shaking things up, perhaps the time for real reform has finally arrived.”
Trump’s executive order last week for a review of aviation safety focused on investigating DEI practices in hiring air-traffic controllers — and while that’s a genuine scandal, it’s actually the least of the FAA’s problems.
Whether or not the controller bears responsibility for last week’s crash, the FAA has already been ordered to scrap identity politics and hire controllers based strictly on merit.
That’s a step in the right direction, but US air traffic operations will remain mired in mid-20th-century technology until they’re run by an independent corporation accountable to regulators but freed from congressional micromanagement, annual budget battles and convoluted federal regulations.
Experience in other countries shows that an independent corporation, funded directly by user fees instead of taxes, can modernize air-traffic control far more efficiently and cheaply than a government agency.
Reforming the system would help drain the DC swamp, shrink the federal budget deficit, improve aviation safety, reduce flight delays and save money for airlines and passengers.
It’s inspiring to dream of sending Americans to Mars in a new Golden Age, but it’s absurd that those flying closer to home are still stuck in the Stone Age.
John Tierney is a contributing editor of City Journal and coauthor of “The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It.” Adapted from City Journal.
