Delta CEO Calls For Air Traffic Control Modernization

While most aspects of air travel have become much more modern over the past several decades, Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian says there is one area that the airline industry has failed to modernize over the years – air traffic control.

During an appearance on "The Today Show" on Thursday, Bastian claimed that the Delta flight between Hartsfield Jackson Airport in Atlanta and LaGuardia Airport in New York City actually takes longer today than it did when the airline began offering the route in the 1950s.

"What happens is in order to keep it safe, everything gets slowed down at the sign of any kind of risk," he said, according to Business Insider.

Bastian claimed that the reason for this delay is the air traffic control system, which has not been modernized and uses many of the same systems and instruments that it used in the 1960s.

"That's the air traffic control system. It's very slow, it's congested, but it's not congested; there's plenty of space if you modernize the skies and you can kind of bring greater efficiency," he said.

Bastian says that air traffic control could and should modernize, making use of satellite technologies and GPS. He also suggested updating the radar and radio systems that air traffic controllers are still using from the 1960s.

US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently addressed this issue on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, highlighting the problem of old, antiquated equipment.

"The equipment that we use, much of it we can't buy parts for new," Duffy said via Business Insider. "We have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down. You're dealing with really old equipment. We're dealing with copper wires, not fiber, not high-speed fiber, and so this is concerning."

Clearly, this is a significant problem for the airline industry. It will certainly be interesting to see how it is solved in the coming years.