After a serious crash between a military helicopter and a passenger plane in January, and other accidents since then, officials are focusing on fixing the country's old air traffic control system and hiring more controllers.

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

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy plans to announce a plan costing billions of dollars to improve the country's air traffic control system on Thursday. At the same time, the Federal Aviation Administration is working to quickly fix technology and staffing problems in Newark and stop similar problems from happening in other places.

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

It's not clear if Duffy's plan, which President Trump supports, will get enough money from Congress to work better than similar plans from the past 30 years. But Duffy thinks it's important. More than 14 billion dollars has already been spent on improvements since 2003, but these haven't really changed how the system works.

Duffy stated, "We are actively addressing this issue and are committed to resolving it. We will construct an entirely new system to benefit everyone."

However, specific information remains limited.

For many years, the system has worked quite well, so governments have mostly ignored it, says Sheldon Jacobson, a professor at the University of Illinois who studies risks in flying. “But ‘quite well’ is not good enough for air travel because people’s lives are in danger.”

Jacobson is not sure if Duffy's idea will work. But people might support it more after the accident between an American Airlines plane and an Army helicopter in Washington D.C. in January, and a plane that crashed and caught fire in Toronto.

Reports and meetings have for years shown the problems of the country's air traffic control system. Recently, a government report in March said that 51 of the FAA's 138 systems were not good enough, and another 54 might not be good enough. In 2023, a problem with the FAA's system caused all flights in the country to stop for over two hours.

"We are using an old system and our buildings and roads are not modern," said Frank Lorenzo, who used to be the head of Continental Airlines. He helped create a big airport centre in Newark that United Airlines still uses, many years after they bought Continental. "We haven't really focused on it as much as we should."

The head of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association told Congress that most of the FAA's communication systems at over 4,600 locations still use old copper wires. These wires are not as reliable as newer fiber optic cables, which can handle more information. Problems with the old wires often cause delays where planes cannot take off at airports and seem to have caused the recent issues in Newark.

The radar system used by air traffic controllers in Philadelphia to guide planes at Newark airport stopped working for at least 30 seconds on April 28. This system needs radar data from New York, which might have failed. This could be because some old copper phone lines stopped working. The FAA uses these lines because Newark controllers were moved from New York to Philadelphia last summer to help with staff shortages.

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

We don't know exactly how long these steps will take, but Duffy hopes the situation in Newark will get better by summer. This is when a project to build a new runway is planned to finish. Some air traffic controllers are still on long sick leave after the radar stopped working, and this made the problem of not having enough staff in Philadelphia worse.

Because of this, the FAA has reduced the number of planes flying into and out of Newark to keep flights safe, causing some flights to be cancelled. The FAA will also talk with airlines to see 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 was even after United stopped 35 flights each day at the airport starting last weekend.

Since 2003, the FAA has been slowly improving its Nextgen program. For example, they developed the ADS-B system, which helps air traffic controllers and other planes know exactly where aircraft are. This system is important in the investigation of the January crash because the Black Hawk helicopter was not using it to show its location when the accident happened.

Duffy has also tried to speed up hiring of air traffic controllers by making the process for joining the academy faster and helping more students succeed. The FAA is also giving extra money to experienced controllers so they don't retire early.

A big problem when improving airports and air travel systems is that the FAA needs to keep the old system working while building a new one. Then, they need to find a way to change to the new system without any problems. This is part of the reason why the agency has made changes more slowly in the past.

This problem has been here for a long time. It's not because people didn't care, but because it's a difficult problem to solve," said Jeff Guzetti, who used to look into accidents and worked for the government department that checks transport, especially planes. "And you need money and good leaders to fix it. The FAA hasn't had enough money, and sometimes not good leaders, for years.