← Videos · Economy, Tariffs & Trade

Duffy Walks Through the Air Traffic Control Build at the Modern Skies Summit, Apr. 22, 2026

April 22, 2026 · US Department of Transportation · 1:32:01

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Secretary Sean Duffy keynoted the Department of Transportation’s Modern Skies Summit on April 22, 2026, walking an audience of department staff, industry, White House and congressional attendees, and press through the air traffic control modernization program — “where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re going,” as he put it. He said the January 2025 DCA air crash prompted the department, at the President’s direction, to examine the systems managing the airspace, and that the review found technology from the 1960s through the 1990s still in service. He contrasted the new commitment with the NextGen effort of 25 years earlier: the promised replacement of floppy discs, paper flight strips, and the old network, he said, was never delivered — “25 years later, we are still using floppy discs, flight strips, paper flight strips, and we are using an old network,” as he stated it. He committed the department to what he called radical transparency on the build’s schedule.

Other speakers at the summit put the delivery target at 2028 for the brand-new air traffic control system, funded in part by the $12.5 billion carried in the One Big Beautiful Bill, as they stated it.

Why it matters

The summit is the modernization program’s public progress report at the one-year mark: the Secretary personally owns the narrative of the build — the failure history he says justifies it, the transparency pledge he says distinguishes it, and the 2028 delivery date the program’s leaders stated on stage. It is the fullest single record of how Duffy presents the effort between funding announcements.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the 2028 completion target for the brand-new air traffic control system, as stated by program leaders at the April 22, 2026 summit. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: U.S. Department of Transportation, “Modern Skies Summit” (official upload, embedded above). Remarks as delivered at the summit; figures as stated by the speakers.