Why the U.S. air safety crisis demands a 30-year rethink, not another 5-year fix

[UNITED STATES] Air travel in the U.S. remains statistically safe, but the headlines are telling a different story — fatal collisions, radar blackouts, and controller shortages. In January, 67 people died in a mid-air crash over Washington, D.C., the kind of nightmare incident aviation systems are designed to prevent. The cause wasn’t a singular failure — it was a warning shot from a system buckling under years of neglect. “These are extremely, extremely important infrastructure decisions,” Professor Gad Allon said. “A neglect of years has brought us to where we are.” America’s aviation backbone, long considered the gold standard, now shows the strain of outdated technology, patchwork staffing, and policy short-sightedness. Fixing it requires more than another injection of temporary funds — it demands a strategic overhaul.

The System Was Already Cracking

America’s aviation infrastructure — from radar towers to air traffic control staffing — has been under-resourced for decades. According to a New York Times investigation, nearly every FAA facility is understaffed. Newark Airport operates with just 22 controllers when 38 are required, and they’re stationed remotely in Philadelphia due to controversial operational reshuffling.

The FAA’s short-term fixes — such as rotating personnel or allocating $25 billion over five years under the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — have failed to build long-term resilience. These are stopgaps, not strategy. “It just solves the issue for now, but that will just kick the ball down the street,” Allon told Wharton Business Daily.

Meanwhile, technical infrastructure has aged out of step with the complexity of modern airspace. Radar outages and blank screens, once rare, now feature in routine safety discussions. Newark was forced to cap flights at 56 per hour after communications failures. If that sounds like a bottleneck from the early 2000s, it’s because, functionally, it is.

What’s missing is not just money — it’s commitment to a generational upgrade. As Allon put it, “These are issues that are going to reappear again and again... unless we solve them in a much more programmatic way for the next 30 years.”

Why We Treat Highways Like Priorities but Not Airspace

There’s a telling contrast in how the U.S. responds to infrastructure emergencies. In 2023, a fiery truck crash destroyed a section of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. A temporary overpass was built in two weeks — a feat of urgency, coordination, and political will.

Air travel, despite being vital to commerce and national logistics, doesn’t get the same treatment. “We don’t treat [air traffic] with the same urgency,” said Allon. That discrepancy reflects a broader cultural and political undervaluing of airspace management — a mistake that becomes deadly when the system fails.

Politically, it’s harder to rally attention for invisible risks like radio outages than for collapsed bridges. But air safety incidents are accumulating — and unlike highways, skies don't offer detours. The system either works or it doesn’t.

The FAA’s tendency to push technological upgrades without human buy-in is another red flag. Controller unions have opposed recent staffing moves, not out of resistance to change, but because operational decisions were made without consulting the people doing the work. “That cannot be done against the consult of the people actually doing the work,” Allon warned.

A better analogy is with the energy grid — another high-consequence, high-complexity system where redundancy, simulation, and long-term investment are essential. Treating air traffic control like an easily modifiable labor pool misses the point entirely.

What the FAA and White House Should Be Doing Now

If safety is non-negotiable, then policy should reflect that. The FAA and federal leadership must stop managing airspace reactively and instead move toward a long-term, fully funded aviation modernization roadmap.

This means:

1. Overhauling staffing strategy to ensure redundancy — not just filling gaps when a crisis erupts.
2. Rethinking tech investments by evaluating how future tools will change operational roles, not just workloads.
3. Budgeting for worst-case scenarios — not just politically safe averages.

Allon put it bluntly: “Treat a near-accident as an accident.” This mental shift — from “fixing” to “future-proofing” — is the only sustainable path forward.

In the private sector, companies don’t bet their future on workarounds. If the U.S. wants to avoid an irreversible loss of aviation leadership — or worse, another fatal incident — government must follow suit.

Our Viewpoint

America's air infrastructure is past due for a strategic rebuild — not just another round of incremental fixes. The tragic crash in D.C. wasn’t just a one-off; it was a systemic alarm. Leadership must stop relying on short-term patches and instead commit to a 30-year modernization plan that puts resilience, redundancy, and risk pricing at the center. The U.S. can no longer afford to treat its airspace like an afterthought. It’s time to match rhetoric with real investment — and urgency with action.