After a bad crash in January and some other crashes, officials want to make the country's old system for guiding planes better and get more people to work as controllers.

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

On Thursday, the person in charge of transport, Sean Duffy, will show a plan to spend a lot of money to make the system that controls planes better. At the same time, the people who manage flights, called the FAA, are trying to fix problems with computers and workers in Newark so the same problems don't happen in other places.

When there are problems, one thing is clear: The old system has trouble managing the country's more than 45,000 flights every day.

We don't know if Duffy's plan, which President Trump likes, will get the money it needs from Congress to work well.

People have spent more than $14 billion since 2003, but the system hasn't changed much.

Duffy said they were working to fix the problem. He said they would make a new system for everyone, their families, and the American people.

However, there are not many details about the plan right now.

Sheldon Jacobson, a professor who studies planes, said that the system worked well for a long time, so people didn't pay much attention to it. But he also said that working well is not enough for flying because people's lives are in danger.

Jacobson thinks Duffy's idea might not work. But people might support it more after a plane and a helicopter crashed in Washington D.C. in January, and another plane turned over and caught fire in Toronto.

For many years, reports and meetings have shown the problems with the country's air traffic control system. For example, a report in March said that many of the systems were not working well. Also, in 2023, a problem with a system stopped all flights in the country for over two hours.

Frank Lorenzo, who used to be the boss of Continental Airlines, said the system and buildings were old and needed more care. He helped create a big airport center in Newark that United Airlines still uses.

The head of the air traffic controllers told the government that the phone and internet systems at many airports use old wires. These old wires are not as good as newer ones that can carry more information. When the old wires stop working, planes often have to stop at airports. This seems to have caused the problems in Newark.

On April 28, the radar system that helps planes fly in and out of Newark airport stopped working for at least 30 seconds. This system gets information from New York, maybe through old phone lines. The people who guide planes were moved from New York to Philadelphia because there were not enough workers.

The FAA said on Wednesday that they will change the old copper wires to new fiber optics. They will also add three new data lines between New York and Philadelphia. The agency is also training more people to be controllers.

We don't know exactly how long these things will take, but Duffy hopes the situation in Newark will get better by summer.

They plan to finish building a new runway then. Some controllers are still not at work because of the radar problem, and this makes the staff shortage in Philadelphia worse.

Because of this, the FAA has made flights slower at Newark to make sure they are safe. This has caused flights to be cancelled.

The FAA has made small improvements since 2003 with its Nextgen program. One improvement is the ADS-B system. This system helps people on the ground and other planes know exactly where aircraft are. This system is important in the January crash investigation because the Black Hawk helicopter was not using it to show where it was when the planes crashed.

Duffy has also tried to make it faster and easier to become an air traffic controller. The FAA is also giving extra money to experienced controllers so they don't stop working early.

It is hard to make big changes to the system for planes. This is because the people in charge have to keep the old system working while they make a new one. Then, they need to change to the new system easily. This is why they have made small changes slowly.

This problem has been here for a long time. It is hard to fix because it needs money and good leaders. The FAA has not had enough money and sometimes not good leaders for many years.