The US Congress has passed a sweeping spending and tax bill that will provide $12.5 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fund air traffic control (ATC) modernisation, one of President Donald Trump’s central policy priorities.
The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” is being hailed by aviation and aerospace groups and now heads to Trump’s desk for a signature.
It also brings forward an expiration date for tax credits tied to production of so-called “clean” hydrogen. That credit had been viewed as helping push aerospace toward lower-carbon fuels.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on 3 June after being approved by the US Senate two days earlier.
“The funding included in the One Big Beautiful Bill is a critical down payment as the administration works to overhaul our ATC infrastructure,” says trade group Airlines for America.
“Our country needs and deserves an air traffic control system that builds upon our safety record, handles 21st century air traffic volumes efficiently and provides innovation for our increasingly complex system.”
Lawmakers and industry leaders have for years been pushing the FAA to make faster progress in updating ATC technology.
But support for an overhaul increased following the January mid-air collision between a US Army helicopter and a PSA Airlines MHIRJ CRJ700. The accident killed 67 people and appears due to the helicopter flying too high.
Repeated ATC equipment failures in recent months, including those causing widespread flight disruptions at Newark Liberty International airport, lent enthusiasm to calls for ATC modernisation.
The new bill designates $12.5 billion from the US government’s fiscal year 2025 budget for “acquisition, construction, sustainment and improvement of facilities and equipment necessary, to improve or maintain aviation safety”.
Specifically, the bill provides:
- $4.75 billion for “telecommunications infrastructure”
- $3 billion for radar replacements
- $1.9 billion for a “new air route traffic control centre”
- $1 billion for terminal radar approach control facilities
- $500 million for runway safety technologies, including airport surface surveillance systems
- $350 million for “unstaffed infrastructure”
- $300 million for information display systems
- $300 million for performance-based navigation, data communication and aeronautical information
- $100 million for controller training technologies
- $100 million for consolidating Air Route Traffic Control Centres
- $80 million for automated weather observing systems
- $50 million for “advanced aviation technologies”, including related to the emerging air taxi sector
- $50 million for “remote” towers
- $40 million to improve aviation safety in Alaska and US territories
The money will be available through end-September 2029.
Setting aside all that money in one swoop addresses one of the main hurdles viewed as hindering the FAA’s prior success in updating ATC systems, a process ongoing since the early 2000s under the agency’s NextGen programme.
That effort has been dogged by delays and other problems partly because the FAA has financed the work piecemeal with funds approved through periodic appropriations bills passed by Congress, according to various sources, including the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The resulting lack of long-term funding certainty, and other issues, made the long-term ATC project difficult to manage, says a GAO report. It estimates that between 2012 and 2023 the FAA spent about $1 billion annually on NextGen.
The $12.5 billion set aside by the new bill is not expected to fund the entire project, which some insiders have said could cost more than $30 billion.
Trump’s Big Beautiful bill also trims several clean-energy provisions introduced several years ago under the Inflation Reduction Act, signed by President Joe Biden. Those include the clean hydrogen tax credit, which was to be available to production sites under construction before 1 January 2033.
The new bill moves that date forward to 1 January 2028.
