Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) urged his fellow congressional lawmakers to “get to work” on providing the Federal Aviation Administration with necessary upgrades, suggesting Congress must own some responsibility for not getting these changes implemented sooner.
The state of air travel in the United States has come under great scrutiny in recent months, with outages at Newark Liberty International Airport getting most of the attention. Sheehy, a former commercial pilot, vowed that Congress would address this issue under President Donald Trump’s watch, claiming Congress’s delay in providing FAA upgrades is now “coming back to bite us.”
“And as you said, hopefully, we don’t have a tragedy. We just had a tragedy a few months ago, as you know, right here in D.C.,” Sheehy stated on Fox News’s The Story with Martha MacCallum, referring to the fatal collision that occurred at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in January. “So it’s time to upgrade. What does that mean? That means a faster pipeline for air traffic controllers.”
Sheehy also pointed to a need for increasing salary standards for air traffic controllers. He described how a Capitol police officer, who was previously an air traffic controller in the U.S. Air Force, chose not to become a civilian air traffic controller and instead work in the Capitol police force due to the pay discrepancy. As such, the Montana senator urged for these issues to be addressed, suggesting there are “some pretty easy fixes.”
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Sheehy’s call to action for Congress comes after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy unveiled a plan to update the Newark airport’s infrastructure, suggesting the Biden administration was to blame for not maintaining this. The secretary also expressed the need for three new telecommunication connections between New York City and Philadelphia to provide greater speed and reliability.
On Tuesday, Duffy hinted that summer travels could hit a snag at airports due to the lack of needed air traffic controllers. Newark airport saw over 110 delays and around 80 cancellations on Tuesday alone.