The US air traffic control system is like “an old clunker of a car,” airline execs tell Congress

The CEOs of airlines including American Airlines, JetBlue, and Delta Air Lines on Wednesday urged Congress to “rebuild America’s aging air traffic control system.”

In an open letter that was also signed by top execs from Southwest, United, Alaska Air, UPS, and FedEx, the group called the FAA’s current ATC system “wildly out of date,” highlighting the “corroded copper wiring, floppy disks and physical strips of paper” that impede the work of air traffic controllers.

Tech outages and staffing issues — the US is said to be short between 3,000 and 3,500 air traffic controllers — have made headlines in recent months, particularly at Newark Liberty International Airport. Earlier this month, United Airlines, which operates about 75% of flights in and out of Newark, cut its daily flights out of the airport by about 10% due to understaffing.

“Right now, it’s more expensive to continue supporting the technology and equipment from the 1980s than it is to buy a new ATC system,” reads the letter, which goes on to compare current maintenance expenses to “pour[ing] money into an old clunker of a car.”

Airlines this month have called for $31 billion in air traffic reform.