EXCLUSIVE — The Department of Transportation’s Federal Aviation Administration is beginning to deliver major results in its sweeping effort to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system, a colossal project that aims to transform how Americans fly by 2028.In a sit-down interview at the DOT’s Washington headquarters, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford laid out how the Trump administration is fulfilling the agency’s decadeslong wish to modernize air travel by implementing more than 10,000 changes before President Donald Trump leaves office.“When the president and the secretary not only said we’re going to modernize, but we’re going to do it in three years, we had to be very deliberate and very strategic,” said Bedford, a former aviation executive.
Commercial air travel has soared to all-time high levels of nearly 3 million passengers per day since the pandemic, according to the Transportation Security Administration. The FAA has struggled to maintain enough air traffic controllers and to operate using antiquated flight-tracking systems and ground infrastructure amid a series of high-profile aviation incidents, all as more people choose air travel year over year.The problems have become increasingly visible to the traveling public, with frequent flight delays and cancellations. One in 12 flights was delayed more than an hour last year, making 2025 the year with the worst on-time performance in more than a decade, according to DOT data reviewed by the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group.
