Regulations and Government
DOT IG: FAA bungled modernization projects
It is no secret that the FAA in the last several months has been forced to shelve a number of important ATC modernization projects.

It is no secret that the FAA in the last several months has been forced to shelve a number of important ATC modernization projects. But now a blunt assessment by Department of Transportation inspector general Kenneth Mead accuses the agency of misjudging the technological maturity of the canceled programs and failing to gauge their true costs.

The projects include the FAA’s LAAS (local-area augmentation system), CPDLC (controller-pilot datalink communications) and Nexcom (next-generation communications) systems. Each could be described as a linchpin in the agency’s vision to overhaul ATC for the 21st century, and each faces serious doubts, according to Mead.