Air travel will be worse this summer, lawmakers warn as FAA gives infuriating update on system fixes, staffing issues

WASHINGTON — Flight delays and cancellations are bound to only get “worse” heading into the summer, members of Congress warned Wednesday — as Federal Aviation Administration officials said it’ll take another year or more to update aging infrastructure and complete recruitment for controllers.This year, the tragic mid-air collision that killed 67 people at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, DC, a spate of frightening near-misses and a 90-second communications blackout in Newark have only added to the urgency as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seeks to overhaul the nation’s air travel.“We have been rightfully focused on the tragedy, the loss of life, with the American Airlines flight,” Sen.Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said in a Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing with FAA officials Wednesday.“But as pointed out by my colleagues, so many problems at Newark, and as I go into the summer season, it’s hard to believe that they won’t get worse — and then just across the country,” added Klobuchar, highlighting another near-miss involving a flight en route to Minneapolis in March.The FAA is still short roughly 3,000 air traffic controllers and in the process of updating copper telecommunications wires for a brand-new fiber-optic network, while Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy plans a hiring blitz and pledges billions of dollars will go toward overhauling systems.The current copper wire system is causing “almost 1,000 outages a week,” one airline industry official previously told The Post.But the recruiting won’t be finished and infrastructure won’t be fully in place for at least another year or more, FAA officials confirmed in the hearing.“Congress and the administration must think boldly about how we can set the FAA up for long-term success,” said Chairman Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“Both our economy’s productive capacity and the safety of the nation’s airspace depend on it.”Air Traffic Organ...