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Office of Aviation

The safest airspace in the world, every day

45,000 flights and 2.9 million passengers, guided by one national system.

The Aviation Office sets the standards for civil aviation, runs air traffic control, and is rebuilding the technology under both.

Airspace modernizationAbout the Aviation Office

Inside the Aviation Office

The agency behind every flight

Four lines of business, 45,000 employees, and the standards that every certificate, every controller and every aircraft in the system answers to.

Modernization

NextGen and beyond

Satellite navigation cut the average departure delay by nine minutes. The next decade rebuilds what is under it.

Program office

Safety

How the Aviation Office certifies an aircraft

From the first drawing to the delivery flight: the design, production and airworthiness reviews behind every certificate.

Aviation safety

Workforce

Become an air traffic controller

The academy in Oklahoma City is hiring its largest class in a decade. No aviation background required to apply.

Applications open now

Overview

The national airspace system runs on infrastructure that predates the jet it guides: copper telecommunications lines, radar sites from the 1970s, and paper flight strips passed by hand between controllers.

The modernization program replaces that foundation over the next decade — new telecommunications, new surveillance, new facilities — without interrupting a system that cannot close for renovation. The work touches every one of the 21 en route centers and more than 300 terminal facilities.

Airspace modernization

Three commitments organize the program. First, safety systems are replaced before efficiency systems. Second, no facility is decommissioned until its replacement has run alongside it. Third, controllers train on the new equipment in the facility where they will use it, not in a laboratory.

What is being replaced

  • Copper telecommunications lines, with a fiber and satellite network
  • Legacy radar processing at the en route centers
    • Primary and secondary surveillance consolidation
    • A common display across en route and terminal control
  • Paper flight strips, with electronic flight data at the 49 busiest towers

Controllers are moving traffic safely on equipment older than they are. Modernization is not an upgrade to the system — for most of these facilities it is the first replacement the equipment has ever had.

Air traffic organization briefing to Congress, March 2026

Facilities and radar

Radar remains the backstop for satellite surveillance, so the program renews both: 618 radar systems are being replaced or service-life extended, and the en route centers — buildings from the late 1950s and early 1960s — are being consolidated into new facilities designed around the new equipment (Aviation Office reauthorization, Pub. L. 118-63).

Figure 1. Air traffic control facilities by decade of construction. Stand-in image.

How the work is funded

Modernization is funded through the Airport and Airway Trust Fund and a dedicated appropriation. The trust fund is fed by aviation excise taxes — the ticket tax, the fuel tax and the cargo waybill tax — so the system's users pay for its renewal.

Timeline

2025
Telecommunications replacement begins at the first 4 en route centers
2026
Electronic flight data live at 12 towers; radar replacement contracts awarded
2028
Common display software at all 21 en route centers
2032
Legacy telecommunications network retired

Last updated August 23, 2026. Questions to the Air Traffic Organization.

References4 sources

  1. 1Pub. L. No. 118-63, Aviation Office Reauthorization Act of 2024.

    Authorizes the facilities and radar replacement program and the controller hiring targets.

    “The Administrator shall set the maximum hiring target for air traffic controllers.”
    https://www.faa.gov/reauthorization
  2. 2Aviation Office, Air Traffic by the Numbers (2026).

    Daily flight counts, passenger volumes and facility totals for the national airspace system.

    “On an average day, the Aviation Office's Air Traffic Organization provides service to more than 45,000 flights.”
    https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic
  1. 3GAO-25-107001, Air Traffic Control Modernization (2025).

    Findings on the age of en route infrastructure and the schedule risk of parallel operation.

    “Many systems remain in service decades past their planned replacement dates.”
    https://www.gao.gov
  2. 4Airport and Airway Trust Fund, fiscal year 2026 status report.

    Excise tax receipts and the share of modernization funded from the trust fund.

    “Receipts are sufficient to meet all obligations through the authorization period.”
    https://www.faa.gov/about/budget