An American Airlines Airbus A319 airplane takes off past the air traffic control tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, January 11, 2023
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
The Biden administration is searching for additional funding for the Federal Aviation Administration, funds that aim to spice up hiring of air traffic controllers and facilitate other improvements to administer increasingly congested airspace.
The White House on Thursday proposed $16.5 billion for the agency, up from the $15.2 billion the FAA received in fiscal 2023. The request would increase funding for the National Airspace System to $3.5 billion, up $500 million, to enhance the systems that oversee the country’s airspace “to soundly accommodate the expansion in traditional industrial aviation traffic alongside latest entrants from the industrial space, unmanned aircraft, and advanced air mobility industries.”
The request, a part of a broad budget proposal for the 2024 fiscal yr, comes lower than two months after a pilot-alert system outage prompted the FAA to ground flights nationwide for the primary time since 9/11.
Read more on Biden’s fiscal yr 2024 budget plan:
Airlines and the Transportation Department have sparred over causes of flight disruptions, with some company executives blaming a shortfall of air traffic controllers. Airlines last yr scaled back their growth plans to place more slack of their schedules as they grappled with a shortage of pilots and aircraft.
President Joe Biden’s request highlighted the increasing variety of rocket launches by space firms as one among the strains on U.S. airspace. Last yr, the FAA managed airspace for a record 92 space missions – a complete that features rocket launches and spacecraft reentries, which it expects to top in 2023.
Lots of those missions launched from Florida, a state which has seen increasingly industrial air traffic as well.
Biden can also be searching for a $3 million increase for consumer protection work on the Transportation Department, which is pushing airlines to formalize policies like ensuring families can sit together without paying a fee in addition to prompt refunds when things go flawed.