In 2025 you did not need statistics to see the operational slack was vanishing. The small safety margin of people, equipment, time, and money that once soaked up bad days was mostly gone.
You could see it in ATC, with controller ranks thousands short and schedules held together by overtime instead of reserve.
You could see it in training and maintenance, where students waited weeks for DPE slots and a thin A&P bench turned small squawks into long outages.
You could see it at low altitude, where helicopters, drones, ag airplanes, and air ambulances shared the same airspace layer with little structure and a lot of faith in see-and-avoid.
And you could see it in the technical ranks, where the same crews were expected to keep the old ATC system running while building its replacement.
It stopped being conceptual on a cold January day over the Potomac, when an American Eagle CRJ-700 and a U.S. Army Black Hawk collided in midair and went into the river. Sixty-seven people died, in airspace that is supposed to be the most controlled in the system.
ADS-B gaps and Corridor 4, a low-level helicopter route under an arrival path into Reagan National, went from briefing-room footnotes to the center of the story. Maybe nobody in the design room ever saw those paths as a real conflict. One helicopter crew in the wrong place and procedures built with conflicting tolerances turned into “when, not if.” Eventually the government admitted its share of fault.
Airplane fleets were short, and people were too. Regionals and some cargo outfits kept bidding for the same pilots with bonuses and flow-through deals. A&Ps went where the pay and schedules let them have a life. Instructors watched students put down hard cash for training and then sit on the ground waiting for checkrides.
The official line talked about “pipelines” and “career paths.” On the ramp it looked like pilots, mechanics, and students getting tired of carrying a system that could not move them forward.
In Washington, this administration did not start with a clean sheet. They walked into an airspace system already worn down: aging facilities, thin staffing, and “modernization” programs that had missed their own deadlines.
But this is their second term with the same NAS. Money has been authorized for hiring and upgrades, yet how much of it reaches the scope, the tower cab, or the syllabus is hard to see from outside. The gap between the talking points and the daily operation still looks wide enough to matter.
Then came the choices that pulled the system the other way. Tariffs on imported parts and avionics may fit into some long-range trade plan. At the parts counter they looked like higher bills, longer downtimes, and more grounded aircraft for schools and operators.
On top of that came the Peraton deal under the Brand New Air Traffic Control System label: a defense contractor as prime integrator for the next ATC backbone, on a weapons-scale budget. Maybe BNATCS will be what the system needs. Maybe it locks today’s problems in place and makes them harder to unwind. For now, it feels like a fast, expensive rebuild laid over a fragile foundation.
Low-altitude airspace kept getting busier. Small unmanned aircraft systems moved from idea to routine, sharing airspace with helicopters and ag aircraft while early BVLOS and package-delivery trials added more tracks to the same low band. The FAA is talking about BVLOS and low-altitude traffic management, but most of it is still proposed rules. Down where the helicopters, drones, and ag airplanes fly, the airspace is crowded and lightly served. “See and avoid” still assumes everyone is looking and everyone avoids.
The cockpit picture was better than the ground picture. Late in the year, a Beechcraft Super King Air landed itself at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan after a serious pressurization problem. Everyone walked away.
That one event stood in for a larger shift: better envelope protection, sharper terrain and traffic displays, tighter runway and taxi alerts, cleaner maintenance data. Quiet, unglamorous tech that keeps crews and passengers out of the accident record.
So, 2025 closed with a split screen. On one side, a midair collision over the capitol, while instructors, mechanics, and controllers held things together as Congress shut the government down and then pointed at the same system it keeps underfunding. On the other hand, cockpit technology and solid training quietly saved people.
The FAA is drawing from the same shallow pool of people as everyone else. Smarter avionics are real safety gains, but they do not repair the underlying system or change what happens on frequency.
Maybe the Peraton deal, BNATCS, and the current round of funding will move the needle where it counts. Right now, they look more like another layer set on top of a patched system that never got a full rebuild. That is how it looks from my side of the ramp. Either we rebuild the system and its people on purpose, or we wait for the next weak spot to show up the hard way.
Raf – Nice summation.
Well written. Succinctly describes the current environment. Add some perspective on the bureaucratic nature of the FAA and its compartmentalized approach. The macular degeneration is very apparent. The brain is stretched, but the belt line is bloated and it ran out of loops.
RAF-
You are throwing stones at a well-worn target. Every problem you describe is probably as bad as you say, but telling us the system needs to be rebuilt without offering any real details as to how you think we should proceed is sort of “empty” for someone of your caliber.
For instance, given the time it takes to train and qualify a person for TRACON duty, what solutions can you offer us! Or for the shortage of A&P’s ? Or for the low-altitude congestion? How about putting your respectable level of experience to work with specific ideas?
Also, may I suggest that the “foundation” of our ATC System is not the crumbling infrastructure and antique equipment, but rather the men and women who continue to work those “positions” every day. They are the foundation – people, not equipment. Maybe we should ask them for their ideas?
That’s a good response to the usual criticism of systems, without really any thought as to how to replace or improve them. A good way to sense whether someone has anything other than stone-throwing is to say “so what’s your solution?” As with ending the war in Ukraine, it’s usually crickets.
Meanwhile, accident rates continue to drop…
Great analysis and insight! It’s about time somebody “told it like it is.”
I went into a FSDO offices and they were mostly empty. Nobody worked in them. They were working remote of just not working. Calls were not answered. Messages were not returned. I don’t have an insight into how the FAA operate but as a consumer, they are not doing their jobs.
I experienced similar levels of customer focus. Showed up at the Scottsdale FSDO for a repairman certificate. I arrived 10 minutes early. The door was, of course, locked. I was looking at 3 FSDO employees carrying on a conversation. They all saw me. Finally, a young lady assistant shows up to open the door 15 minutes later. The 3 elder employees couldn’t be bothered to walk the 10 feet to open the door….or was that outside of their pay grade? At any rate, the return on taxpayer investment is abysmal. I think there is plenty of available money to address the manpower problems if they would just hire someone who knows how to take an organization and fix it. I’d be happy to step in, but I believe I’m too old for consideration :-)…of course, there are elected officials much older….
Very interesting read. Anyone who’s been flying IFR on the east coast knows how thin ATC is stretched. Maintenance needs to scheduled way in advanced and hang on for a major parts order.
I don’t see the King Air autoland as anywhere near a win for the industry, Garmin, or the pilots involved in it. So many questions. Why did the crew not see the initial problem before the plane was hijacked by the computer? Why did they not resume control if they were non”incapacitated” as the media declared? Why, did they claim not know how to over ride the Autoland? Is it even possible? Does Garmin provide training on resuming control? Are all planes equipped with the system actually tested to see if it works properly in that plane, or just hope it does? Way too many questions to claim that this was a great test of Autoland. It was an example of “hold my beer and watch this”.
Raf, I share your concerns. In the maintenance end of things, I got my A&P in 1970, after 4 years as a helicopter Flight Engineer in the USAF. I did it the ‘hard way’ working at a Cessna dealer, learning, growing, working. Using my Air Force and dealership work as experience, I was recommended to take the test. The FAA examiner came to the dealership to give the practical tests. Three years later, I took a grueling 9 hour series of tests and interviews and came away with my IA. I eventually came to the realization that I could not make a decent living in GA, and went to Grumman Aerospace, becoming a traveling field service engineer on Grumman Aircraft. Now retired, what I’m seeing in GA maintenance is a lack of trained, dedicated A&P’s, maintenance errors, with the ‘old guys’ leaving in droves. A sad state of affairs. I would gladly return to GA in some capacity, but nobody’s hiring a 78 year old.
Raf, Well written and oh so true. I’m glad you got in how the training industry was impacted.
“Either we rebuild the system and its people on purpose, or we wait for the next weak spot to show up the hard way.”
Raf,
Since this is a commentary, providing a platform for your opinion(s), I like others agree with your succinct ability to get your worldview across to others. I also agree with burgerilla that you picked the obvious low hanging fruit of these well known US aviation failure points, making your commentary intellectually lazy simply because you pointed out the glaringly obvious without your personal opinions on solutions. Without solutions, pointing out the same problems plaguing US aviation since the late sixties, turns your commentary into what I have been forced to hear from our collective politicians as nothing more than another “congressional hearing”, in this case via your succinct written word.
You used the word “maybe” quite often. However, we both know pointing out the most obvious problems with no solutions, yet doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different, let alone better outcome… truly is insane.
My opinionated position is… our system of government is so corrupt, while we have a Constitution, it is being willfully ignored, willfully violated daily, with the legacy press equally, willfully, literally propagandizing the past administrations, as well as the current government’s authoritative narrative. And we citizen’s don’t respond…until it hits our pocketbook. No news here in my response so far. The public has also been intellectually lazy which permits our government/press to feed off our hard work, that being our hard work derived tax dollars, to spend in the most corrupt way. We have been conditioned to our environment with our choices being handed to us as “the lessor of the two evils”. And we think and believe there is only choices between two evils. There has little to no demand for character and honesty, respect and honor of the rule of law, other than exercising our fingers as occasional keyboard commandos masquerading as courage and leadership.
Our airforce cannot muster more than a 54% readiness of daily flyable combat aircraft. Of the 54% flyable, only 50% of those will be flyable after being repositioned into whatever battle zone we choose to be in.
As you well pointed out, our infrastructure is crumbling, especially ATC, with our most valuable asset, the abused people who stick there lives on the line every day, often 7 days a week 10 hours a day, keeping us alive as we travel by air… personally and commercially… already in collective burnout. And we are financing all of these “maybe’s” with borrowed money spent by mostly Defence contractors with no more assurances of completion than “maybe” it will all work out.
Solution(s)???… frankly there is none until the USA collapses under the weight of its own debt. I believe that will happen in the next 6-18 months. Voting for the lessor of the two evils has produced evil. Our society has no tangible solution for evil as the system is stacked to produce only evil candidates. Like going to a smorgasbord, being invited to eat of a menu only containing two food items picked out by the ownership, both tainted with botulism, and encouraged you can eat all you want. And we seem to be conditioned to accept this governmental “menu” as democracy.
In 2026 3 trillion dollars of debt service is due. How can we pay for this, and improve ATC, and our military aviation, our GA, our jobs, our way of life? So far, it’s colonizing someone else’s resources by regime change wars financed by borrowed money. Until we stop this madness internally and globally , there is no other solution other than the inevitable economic collapse that is coming due shortly. Not a fun prediction. No satisfaction in being right as we end up trying to simply eat, let alone fly.
Thanks Raf for succinctly reminding us there really is no solution other than complete government overhaul which will only come after total collapse. Which means I need to apologize to you for accusing you of being intellectually lazy. We both know there is only one solution and will happen soon.
While some sources give modern adults an attention span of 8.25 seconds, others a span of 67 seconds and some consider 47 seconds a reasonable mean, I think Raf’s posting is a well constructed and valuable reminder of where we find ourselves in this complex and taxing multi-media world we inhabit. Raf’s article (2 and3 minutes long) brings to focus events and policy that is of consequence to everyone, however remote it might seem. In regards to financial collapse within the next 6 to 18 months I tend to disagree. According to the “Economist”, the appetite for BNPL (buy now pay later) has increased and financial companies are in a “feeding frenzy” to get in on the debt financing business. As long as there is a nickel to be made this game isn’t over. Back to you.
Tom, thank you. I’m glad you saw the piece as a useful reminder of where we are, and that it kept the focus on events and policy that matter, even when they feel remote day to day.
On the collapse timeline, your point about buy now pay later (BNPL) and the debt appetite, as you noted from The Economist, is a good reminder that this can run longer than people expect.
Yes, thanks. Too soon old, too late smart. If we can’t remember what has recently occurred we might just repeat these bad moves and move us away from responsible and reasonable future decisions that an open, democratic society must have to sustain itself and secure it’s freedoms. I too worry about national debt and see where it has brought the Can$. Once, many moons ago it was at a premium to the greenback. We had an airforce, navy and military back then. We are 25 years behind the 8 ball.
Personal debt and how families handle their budgets…your reference to BMPL…and how finance companies are going to provide avenues for the consumer to go deeper in hock and the economic collapse of our government are two different events with one glaring similarity. No one loans money without collateral. Our government is buried so deep in debt, there are only three ways out. Go BK/default, pay the interest to serve that debt, or steal more of someone else’s resource to collateralize more borrowing. The invasion of Venezuela proves we are currently engaged in and will continue the option. While that option plays out, many lives will be lost who had no vote in the decision making. Today, we hastened our economic collapse because regime change attempts costs BIGTIME financially let alone morally. And we are waging war with a worn out military, difficulty meeting recruitment levels, poorly performing technology, no more military parody, an ignorant and asleep population allowing all this chaos with no long term strategy for our own economy or foreign policy in general. The entire planet wants to get out under the US dollar. No one will buy our bonds and treasuries. We cannot, as a nation, to be trusted. So, straightening out ATC will be way down the financial food chain for the foreseeable future. All of the required changes potentially leading to solutions well outlined in Raf’s solution response costs money, money we don’t have. And today proves our solution for debt servicing is war.
this is a when not an article to simply complain with no offering of any solution is not very helpful nor informative.. One of the issues the FA has to deal with which is amazingly dumb is the 5 year reauthorization cycle. this puts the whole organization into a “temporary” mindset. this hinders long term planning and execution of programs and should be ended.
*Steve K, thank you. The cushion is getting thin, and when there is no cushion, small problems turn big fast.
*Jack Norris, thanks, “compartmentalized” is exactly how it feels. And that Scottsdale FSDO story is a real problem, not answering the phone is not acceptable.
*Burgerilla, fair pushback. Slack comes from real resources: people, facilities, and enough capacity to keep work moving, like checkrides, inspections, and approvals getting done on time.
*OldDPE, I agree, “what’s the solution” is a fair question. Mine is simple: people, infrastructure, enough capacity to keep the line moving, and the discipline to run it right.
*MSletten, you may be right on the trend line, but the system can still be running tight. I watch the strain signals: delays, thin staffing, checkride waits, parts waits, and burnout.
*Gene Benson, thank you, I appreciate it. I was trying to describe what the working end of the system feels like right now.
*Pat, sorry you ran into that. If the public cannot reach a FSDO, it slows real work, so calls returned and appointments kept should be non-negotiable.
*Jerry, I’m with you, good outcome, but we still need to know what actually happened. We need headlines to get attention, like the DCA midair did, but we need lessons learned to fix the real failure chain.
*David Bickford, thank you for sharing that, your story says a lot. If we want A&Ps to stay, the job has to pay, and experienced people should be kept in the loop, not pushed out.
*cvccali, thank you. The DPE bottleneck is real, and it drives good students out when they are ready but stuck waiting.
*History 101, thanks for the thoughtful reply, I get the frustration. I just do not think we should wait for collapse, there are practical fixes we can still do now.
*Michael Capoccia, I agree on the 5-year cycle problem. Big infrastructure cannot be run on short-term planning and constant resets.
Several of you said, fairly, “OK Raf, what would you do?” Here’s my short 2026 fix list. What is yours?
With respect to #3: Keeping experienced personnel in roles designed to elevate the overall technical expertise of a maintenance facility is not as simple as it seems.
Mike Busch’s Savvy Aviator is a wonderful example of putting highly-experienced personnel just one phone call away from a shop conflicted with an airworthiness concern. In many cases, the synergy works, the issue is resolved and all parties walk away with shared levels of experience and expertise. But it has a down side.
FAA regulations dictate that return-to-service is not done by committee, and airworthiness cannot be affected by off-site personnel (at least in Part 91 ops).
In addition, relatively inexperienced personnel will often yield to an opinion of seemingly greater authority without the advantage of knowing any different. But, his signature goes in the logbook nonetheless. This usurping of obligation serves no one.
Keeping experience in the shop is difficult for a variety of reasons, many financial, but the nomadic quality of the work force is problematic. Keeping people engaged in a “company community” is vital to elevating the long term worth of the personnel. Investing in continuing education while ensuring technicians and their families have access to a quality of life we all aspire to is crucial.
Small, airport communities and regional entities can do this but not without the help of regulators at every level-including the FAA. All that is required is an understanding of the worth, and what it means when it’s gone.
Paul Brevard, I’ve appreciated your input on other topics, and especially on this one. You are speaking from real maintenance experience.
And I agree. Airworthiness is not a group vote. The A&P who signs the return to service owns the call. Experience can advise, but it cannot replace the maintenance manual, AD compliance, or the signature in the logbook.
Airspace in a summary is close to useless. Airspace needs to be divided above 18,000 feet MSL (class A) and below 18,000 feet MSL with classes B; C; & D airspace included with above 18,000 feet MSL because of the avionics and ATC required contact. All other airspace is generally uncontrolled except class E. Plus, the military has military operation areas (MOAs) where they are suppose to conduct all, I repeat all of their exercises. Meaning the DC helicopter/airline collision was exclusively the military operating where they had no legal reason to be there and were the cause due to this negligence on the military’s part. Above 18,000 feet MSL and classes B; C & D are generally airline airspace and where streamlining & efficiency is an imperative with numerous altitudes available for ATC to place airliners for transiting. Uncontrolled airspace and class E airspace are just fine the way they are and need to stay that way because that is where most small aircraft training occurs and where most individual pilots fly; and are generally exclusive because training rarely occurs in IFR conditions. The above is the way to view US airspace. Anything else just creates distractions and unneeded explanations. The problem with 2D maps is they do not show the 3D that is available to ATC for transiting aircraft making 2D maps look cluttered; when they are not due to 3D transiting. If Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta Hartsfield can land/takeoff 90 airliners per minute; with the same equipment, any other airport can. Meaning, the problem is one of “get in line” and “keep your spacing” which all Airline Transport Pilots are capable of. So “updating” is a matter of having the same equipment at all other metro airports as Hartsfield and O’Hair and in the airliners. Meaning, no real problem exists. Just an update is needed for other airports. For the government to spend large amounts of funds, when only this update is needed; appears very wasteful. Creating a 2nd “primary” airport at Hartsfiled and O’Hare and other busy metro airports is probably more important than an airspace review. Tell Mr. Duffy, please.
Terry, I see what you are aiming for, a simpler 3D picture pilots can use. A few technical points need small corrections.
On airspace, “controlled vs. uncontrolled” is an FAA definition and it is not the same as “talking to ATC or not.” Controlled airspace includes Classes A, B, C, D, and E. Uncontrolled airspace is Class G.
On MOAs, they are one tool for certain types of military training, not the place where all military exercises are supposed to occur. MOAs are also joint-use airspace. VFR is not prohibited, although I agree that avoiding a hot MOA when you can is the safer call.
For IFR, ATC may clear nonparticipating IFR traffic through an active MOA only if IFR separation can be provided; otherwise ATC will reroute or restrict IFR traffic.
On the DCA midair example, the better discussion is procedures, workload, and margins in that corridor, rather than a blanket claim that the helicopter had no legal basis to be there.
And on “90 operations per minute,” that is 5,400 ops per hour, which is not realistic. Even ATL and ORD are on the order of a couple hundred operations per hour in peak periods, not thousands.