The Department of Transportation might be forced to shut down the airspace in certain parts of the country if the government shutdown continues into next week.
This is a half truth. There are a lot of technologies from the 60’s to 80’s still in use as backups. At least for the enroute portion these are essentially backups for backups to ensure planes do not hit each other. Tech in towers is generally older overall since it’s much more costly to implement at every airport. Ultimately all this does is eat into the budget which could be used to hire more or pay better, but either likely go to other critical services anyway. Manpower is by far the biggest issue for controllers.
This is a half truth. There are a lot of technologies from the 60’s to 80’s still in use as backups. At least for the enroute portion these are essentially backups for backups to ensure planes do not hit each other. Tech in towers is generally older overall since it’s much more costly to implement at every airport. Ultimately all this does is eat into the budget which could be used to hire more or pay better, but either likely go to other critical services anyway. Manpower is by far the biggest issue for controllers.