After a deadly crash in January between a military helicopter and a passenger plane, and other accidents since then, officials are now trying to improve the country's old air traffic control system and hire more controllers.

They say this would help keep things safe and stop the problems that have happened at the Newark, New Jersey, airport since its radar system stopped working for a short time last week.

On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will announce a plan worth billions of dollars to completely change the country's air traffic control system. At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration is trying to quickly fix technology and staffing problems in Newark and prevent similar problems in other places.

In this difficult situation, one thing is clear: The old system has trouble managing the country's more than 45,000 daily flights.

It is unclear if Duffy's plan, which President Donald Trump supports, will receive enough money from Congress to work better than earlier efforts to change the system over the past 30 years. But Duffy believes it is important. Over $14 billion has been spent on improvements since 2003, but these have not greatly altered how the system operates.

"We are working on this problem and will fix it. We will build a completely new system for all of you, your families, and the American people," Duffy said.

But we don't have many details yet. We don't know if the plan will make the air traffic control system private, like Trump wanted before. Duffy hasn't talked about that idea. The announcement on Thursday will probably bring together many groups, such as unions who would likely be against making it private, along with business groups, people from the industry, and families of those who died in the plane crash in January.

For many years, the system worked quite well, so governments mostly ignored it, according to Sheldon Jacobson, a professor at the University of Illinois who studies dangers in flying. “But working quite well is not enough when we talk about air travel because people’s lives can be lost.”

Jacobson is not sure if Duffy's idea will work. But people might support it more after the recent accidents: a plane hitting a helicopter near Washington D.C. and another plane turning over and catching fire in Toronto.

For many years, reports and meetings have shown the problems with the country's air traffic control system. Recently, a government report in March said that 51 out of 138 systems were considered too old to continue, and 54 others might also be too old. In 2023, a problem with a system caused all flights in the country to stop for over two hours.

"We're using an old system and our infrastructure is not modern," said Frank Lorenzo, who was the CEO of Continental Airlines. He helped set up a major hub in Newark that United Airlines still uses, years after they bought Continental. "We haven't really paid attention to it as much as it needs."

The head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association told Congress that most of the FAA's communication system at over 4,600 places still uses old copper wires. These are not as good as fiber optic cables, which can carry more information. When these old wires unexpectedly stop working, flights are often stopped at airports. This seems to have caused the problems in Newark.

On April 28, the radar system that air traffic controllers in Philadelphia use to guide planes at Newark airport stopped working for at least 30 seconds. This system gets radar information from New York, possibly through old copper phone lines that might have broken. The FAA uses these lines because controllers were moved from New York to Philadelphia last summer to help with not having enough staff.

The FAA announced on Wednesday that they will change the old copper wires to fiber optics. They will also put in three new data lines between New York and Philadelphia. The agency is also trying to train and approve more air traffic controllers.

It wasn't clear right away how long these actions would take, but Duffy hopes the situation in Newark will improve by summer. That's when a project to build a runway is planned to finish. Some controllers are still on long leave because of the radar problem, and this made the lack of staff in Philadelphia worse.

Because of this, the FAA has reduced the number of planes flying in and out of Newark to make sure they can be managed safely, which has caused flights to be cancelled. Duffy also said the FAA will talk with all airlines to find out how many flights the airport can manage. On Wednesday, Newark had the most cancelled flights in the country, with 42 leaving and 46 arriving, according to FlightAware.com. This happened even though United had already stopped 35 flights a day at the airport since last weekend.

Since 2003, the FAA has slowly improved air travel with its Nextgen program. A key improvement is the ADS-B system. This system helps air traffic controllers and other planes know the exact location of aircraft. The ADS-B system is important in the investigation of the January crash because the Black Hawk helicopter involved was not using it to show its location when the accident happened.

Duffy has also tried to make it easier to hire air traffic controllers by making the training shorter and helping more students pass. The FAA is also giving extra money to experienced controllers so they don't retire too early.

It's hard to improve the aviation system because the FAA has to keep the old system working while they build a new one, and then they need to switch to the new one without problems.

Jeff Guzetti, who used to investigate accidents and worked for the government in aviation, said the problem has been here for many years. He said it’s not because people didn’t care, but because it’s a hard problem to fix. He also said it needs money and good planning, and the FAA hasn’t had enough of either for a long time.