19. Department of Transportation · Minor

Require the FAA to operate more like a business

Partially done

Printed page 633 19. Department of Transportation

“Require the FAA to operate more like a business. The FAA has not made good use of the unique authority it has been given in areas like personnel and acquisition.”

What has happened

Dec 4, 2025 Partially done
The FAA used its acquisition flexibility on the largest procurement it has run in decades: DOT and the FAA expedited the procurement and wrote what the agency calls a first-of-its-kind contract for the Brand New Air Traffic Control System, naming Peraton as sole Prime Integrator with its profit tied directly to schedule and performance outcomes and an Executive Steering Committee of senior DOT and FAA officials evaluating it. That is the acquisition limb of the ask, exercised once on one program. The personnel limb has not moved - Congress had to override 49 U.S.C. 40122(c) in P.L. 119-75 sec. 119I to let the FAA raise pay for Aerospace Medicine physicians - and nothing requires the agency as a whole to operate like a business.
- FAA: Transportation Secretary Duffy and FAA Administrator Bedford announce Peraton as Prime Integrator for the Brand New Air Traffic Control System
  Primary Executive branch Dec 4, 2025
- Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 (P.L. 119-75) sec. 119I - pay flexibility for FAA Office of Aerospace Medicine notwithstanding 49 U.S.C. 40122(c)
  Primary Congress Feb 3, 2026

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

The FAA’s BNATCS fact sheet (https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/fact_sheets/BNATCS_fact_sheet.pdf, read in full) sets out the contract structure: a single integrator, profit tied to performance achievement outcomes, financial penalties for missed deadlines, and a contract summary to be posted on sam.gov. It is the clearest in-window use of the FAA Acquisition Management System’s freedom from the FAR.
partial rather than done because the Quote is about the agency’s habits, not one contract, and because the personnel side went the other way: the FAA’s own 49 U.S.C. 40122 personnel system needed a statutory exception before it could pay physicians competitively.
transportation.gov and transit.dot.gov are 403 walls; faa.gov answers 200 to a browser User-Agent and publishes a full sitemap index, which is how this was found.

Action: other
Object: FAA personnel and acquisition authority
ID: 1739