Hey, everybody, uh, Sean Duffy here. Um, obviously there's a lot of coverage right now about what's happening in, uh, Newark and the airspace. Want to just talk about a couple things as background. So, the air traffic control system that we use today is anywhere from 25 to 50 years old. Uh, we have copper wires, not fiber.
Uh, we use radar that is, you know, 1983 vintage at the earliest. A lot of it is 1970s, some of it even earlier than that. Um radars, I'm sorry -- radios also, um, incredibly antiquated. And so, this is not a new problem. We've known this problem has existed. There has been multiple GAO reports over the last four years saying you have real problems with air traffic control and you should do something with it before it actually fails.
So, think about this, the last administration spent $1.2 trillion, the largest infrastructure package ever known to man, they spent, Joe Biden signed right here at this White House. And how much was spent to rebuild air traffic control, $5 billion. And of the $5 billion that was spent, or was given, only $1 billion was actually spent.
So, they have made no investments in the system that we now see um having issues in Newark. On top of that, they were focused on things like racist roads. They were -- they literally spent time concerned about the word cockpit and changing cockpit to flight deck. It's not funny, that's actually what they spend time, on or airmen to aeronaut.
And so, now this administration has come in and it was shortly after, uh, the -- the DCA air crash that I started to look at the air traffic control system. And very quickly, I saw one piece of the pie where there was issues and then scratched further, and there's another piece of the pie. And as we looked at it, we see that the whole system needs to be redone.
We need to build a brand new air traffic control system. And it was about six weeks ago, I presented that plan to the president. The president has signed off on this plan. I've been working with OMB and others inside the White House. We're going to roll out this infrastructure proposal on this Thursday. We have 47 groups that are going to come.
We have unions, we have the industry, we have trade groups. We have the families of -- from the air crash on the 29th of January are going to come. We have legislators, uh, this is bipartisan. You have Democrats and Republicans, all of our -- all of you fly, all of our families fly, and they want to make sure when they do fly, they can fly safely.
Uh, and so specifically, in regard to, uh, to Newark, we -- uh, we've slowed down the traffic. Right? So, uh, safety is our mission, right? Efficiency is not -- we love efficiency, but safety is critical for us, and so if we feel like there's issues in the airspace, we'll slow it down and when you lose your scope or you lose communication with, uh, with airplanes, automatically you're going to slow it down.
If you're driving down the freeway at 70 miles an hour and someone throws a bucket of white paint on your windshield, what do you do? You slow down. We slow it down. And again, we want to make sure this is a safe airspace for all travelers. With that, it's caused delays, right? It's caused cancellations.
Uh, we're looking at bringing in all of the airlines that serve Newark and having all of them with all of us have a conversation about how do we -- how do we manage the flights out of Newark. So, they don't want to see families go to the airport and wait four hours just to have their flights canceled. That's unfair to them.
So, we want to have the right number of flights, uh, landing and taking off at Newark that we can manage. And then the passengers know what, what -- uh, what or if their flight is going to fly. So, we're in the process of that right now. In addition, we've already started, uh, the, uh, the new build out of the communication system at Newark.
So, many of you might know that Newark is controlled out of the Philly TRACON. It moved from New York to Philly last summer. And, uh, we still pull some information from, uh, the New York TRACON down to Philly. I would argue they probably should have built the whole new facility in Philadelphia before they moved it, that's not what happened.
So, we are going to build it now. The first estimates that I got a few days ago was it was going to take eight to six months. Uh, I feel pretty good right now. I don't want to overpromise and under-deliver, but I feel pretty good that we can get that built by this summer. Um, and again, one other complication, you guys may know this as well, we have construction on one of our runways also in Newark.
So, we are on it. We are going to fix it. We are going to build a brand new system for all of you and your families and the American people that the president has said yes to. And so, um, one last point, uh, it hasn't been done because it's hard, right? We have to keep planes in the air, landing and taking off, these facilities have to operate as were building, uh, new radar, fiber radios, sensors, so that that choreography is going to be challenging for us. But just because it's challenging, doesn't mean that we don't do it. Prior administrations said it's too complicated, we're not going to do it. That is not this administration, it's going to be -- it's going to be a lift.
We are going to bring in the best companies in America to help us with this project, um. And they're excited to be part of this great American buildup. By the way, this is the greatest build -- the greatest project that the FAA has undertaken in its existence, what we're going to do in the next three or four years.
And so with that, happy to take your questions.
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-- that passengers fly out of another airport right now rather than doing Philadelphia, JFK, LaGuardia, rather than use the Newark Airport?
The question was, would I recommend that?
Yes.
So, I think Newark is safe. Listen, I fly out of that airport all the time. Um, my family flies out, but -- but just in regard to traffic, some people -- because they're concerned about delays may make choices to go to Philly or LaGuardia or JFK, that's true. Um, but we want to -- we want to get -- we want to get an agreement with the airlines so, we have the right flow into Newark, so people can make decisions.
And if they book a flight, they know it's going to fly and not be delayed.
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And you just talked about the revamp of the system. Obviously people believe that that is needed now, but it's going to take some time.
It is.
If you're looking at Newark right now, what is the short term solution, if any, for that and how long do you expect that might last?
So, uh, again, so the new runway is going to come online, or the runway under construction is going to come online in the middle of June. Uh, we -- uh, again, the whole project across the country is going to take three to four years, um. But we are going to focus on Newark first, I mentioned that, uh, in the infrastructure package, they sent the FAA $5 billion for this build.
They spent less than $1 billion. We're going to pull some of that money and start dealing with Newark right now and the communication system and that is already underway.
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No, no, I'm saying in the summer, we hope that to be done.
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Can you clarify. Two questions, if I could. Can you clarify, we heard from the FAA, it was 90 seconds that there was this outage, that the radar still wasn't working, and then last night you said 30 seconds. Can you clarify, was it 90, was it 30?
So, the FAA is in my office, talk to them all the time. They said 30 seconds. I'm not sure how, uh -- I think the Wall Street Journal and others have reported 90 seconds if they're counting scope and communication and counting that together. But the information I have from the FAA is 30 seconds.
And, if I could -- if I could, so the controllers that have called out due to trauma, is there an effort to bring them back? Is there a conversation with them? What do you think should be done to backfill for the controllers and the TRACON that said, there was a traumatic incident because this went out.
Yeah, so the -- so the controllers, uh, said they were traumatized and they're not on duty right now. I want to make sure that my controllers are of good mind and good spirit when they come in. It's an intense job. Uh, but just to that point, last week, we announced, again, we're -- we're 3,000 controllers short in America, 3,000 short.
And again, we've been 3,000 short for a very long time. And so, what I've done is, um, I'm taking the top qualified, the best qualified applicants who take the entrance exam, I'm putting them in the academy first. It was taken a year and a half to get a slot in the academy until you got your seat in the academy.
If you're 25 years old, you're going to find a new job. So, we were losing, uh, potential candidates to go to the academy. And also when we take the best qualified, we're hopefully going to lower our washout rate. Right now, the washout rate is 35 percent. If we can get it down to 25 percent, we'll be way better off.
We're -- we're rejiggering the staffing in Oklahoma City. So, we -- we think we can supercharge our air traffic controllers through the academy. That takes time. It's, you know, two to three years to certify a controller after they come out of the academy. What we've also done is, uh, controllers can retire after 25 years of service.
And again, these are the best -- these are the best equipped controllers that we have. And so, I've offered them a 20 percent upfront bonus of their salary to get them to stay on the job, not retire. And so, hopefully we're going to have a lot of those controllers stay on the job, and as we bring more controllers on, we're going to deal with this 3,000 controller shortage.
But again, you need to see problems and try to address the problems surrounding this sector that wasn't done over the past four years.
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Secretary, you mentioned air traffic controllers, you said it takes a while to train them on [Inaudible]. Specifically on the training aspect of this, what is the short term fix for that?
So -- so, you're talking about Newark, the Philly TRACON?
Any -- you said there was a shortage of air traffic controllers.
Yeah.
Specifically on training, it takes them over a year to get certified under this space. Is there anything that can be done to get them trained faster within the next year?
The question is, can I do something more quickly to train controllers? And the answer is, no. This all takes time. You can't snap your fingers and have really complicated airspace, you know, where I can stand up controllers who understand it. And so, all of this is going to take time, which is why I wish someone would have seen this in the years before I came into this job.
But again, I want to pass this off to the next secretary where we have all the controllers that we need and we have an infrastructure that is truly state of the art and works for the American people Just one -- you, have to think about this technology changes so quickly. we're dealing with 1980s, 1990s equipment.
So, think you used to use a cell phone or a flip phone, right? If I send an update to a flip phone, what do you get with the update to your flip phone, nothing. If I have an iPhone, I can update that system over and over again. We're going to build this and as new technology comes out, we'll have this infrastructure that we can build on top of. What's going to happen is the airspace is going to be safer, but with the technology we're going to deploy, it's going to breed more efficiency.
There's more airplanes in the air today than ever. So, we need efficiency in the airspace and this brand new system will actually offer that as well. I'll do one more question then I got to go.
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Can you clarify, is it true that over a thousand would-be air traffic controllers were wiped out of consideration overnight because of diversity and inclusion hiring targets suddenly being implemented? Is that true?
So, to that question, I've actually asked the IG to investigate it. Um, I've asked an outside law firm to investigate and there's a lawsuit pending on that right now. And, uh, because of that, I'm not going to comment on the specifics of that lawsuit.
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Are you going to promise by the 4th of July that everything at Newark will be smoother?
No, I --
By 4th of July?
Listen -- What I -- So in Newark, again the proposal was eight months, then they gave me six months at the FAA. How fast can we do this? I believe we can do it by the summer. So, is it the 4th of July? Again, we are trying to move at lightning speed, but also with always the backdrop that it has to be safe, right?
Again, we put people's lives in our hands. And so, uh, I'm not going to put speed over safety. It's going to be as fast as we can and as safe as we can. And with that, thank you all very much.