GAO Warns the FAA’s Rush to Rebuild Air Traffic Control Could Bring Overruns and Disruptions

On September 14, 2026, the Government Accountability Office said the Federal Aviation Administration’s push to rebuild US air traffic control at record speed risks cost overruns, delays and disruption for controllers. “In essence, the FAA is buying delivery speed at the risk of cost uncertainty and potential disruptions,” the congressional watchdog wrote.

The report examines the Brand New Air Traffic Control System, or BNATCS, the plan the Transportation Secretary announced in May 2025. Its first phase covers 13 programs, from radios and radars to telecommunications and weather sensors, and is due to finish by December 2028.

The Money Does Not Add Up Yet

In July 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave the FAA $12.5 billion for the effort: $9 billion for systems and $3.5 billion for facilities. By June 2026, the FAA’s own estimate put phase 1 systems work at $10.6 billion, about $1.6 billion more than Congress provided.

The FAA plans to cover $1.01 billion of that gap from its fiscal 2026 budget, which still leaves $574 million unfunded. The fiscal 2027 budget request asks for about $565 million for phase 1, and officials told GAO they would look for other ways to close any remaining shortfall.

The biggest overrun is in telecommunications, which the FAA calls the backbone of air traffic communications. The program received $4.75 billion and is now estimated at $5.91 billion, while radars came in $560 million under their $3 billion allocation.

In August, the FAA picked AT&T to lead its air traffic network rebuild, taking over the lead role from Verizon.

GAO also says the $10.6 billion is too low. The estimate leaves out government costs and most operating and maintenance costs, and FAA officials could not produce the analysis behind it.

Phase 2, new automation systems to track aircraft and manage traffic flows, would need roughly another $10.2 billion, not counting facilities. The FAA has no start or finish date for it.

11,389 Schedules and No Master Plan

The FAA has no integrated master schedule for phase 1. It runs 11,389 separate project schedules instead, so different projects can book installations at the same site again and again, generally without anyone reducing the disruption to air traffic operations.

GAO concluded that a blanket waiver from the FAA Administrator exempted BNATCS from the agency’s normal acquisition rules, including the requirement for a lifecycle cost estimate. The Department of Transportation disputes that reading.

Peraton, the systems integrator hired in December 2025 on a contract with a $1.5 billion ceiling, is testing an AI scheduling tool. GAO said it is unclear when the tool will be in use or how well it will work.

GAO made two recommendations: a lifecycle cost estimate built to its best practices, and a detailed integrated master schedule for phase 1. The department partially agreed with both but did not say what it would do about them.

The FAA disagrees with the findings and says it has reliable cost estimates and a detailed schedule, FlightGlobal reported. The agency told Reuters the effort “remains largely on plan,” with more than 95% of specific tasks on track.

Why Nobody Is Arguing for Slowing Down

GAO does not question the need for speed. In September 2024, it found that more than 75% of the FAA’s 138 air traffic control systems were unsustainable or potentially unsustainable, and controllers rely on them to handle up to 45,000 flights a day.

Some of the work is moving. As of May 2026, the FAA had replaced 2,560 of 5,170 aging copper lines with fiber optic cable, and it now plans to replace 1,581 voice radios by December 2028, about nine years earlier than before.

The risk GAO describes is what happens if the rush stumbles. The FAA has been trying to modernize air traffic control since the 1980s with limited results, and GAO warns that another failure would leave controllers on outdated equipment prone to outages and ground stops.

Travelers have seen what that looks like. In August, an equipment failure at one FAA facility in Minneapolis knocked out radar and radio for about two hours and grounded flights across nine states.