19. Department of Transportation · Minor · Needs Congress
Set a deadline barring ATO funding of new nondigital control towers
Printed page 634 19. Department of Transportation
“Shorter-term reforms could include implementing user fees for unconventional airspace users (for example, advanced air mobility, space launch, and recovery) and giving the ATO a deadline after which it could not authorize or fund any more nondigital/remote control towers.”
What has happened
- Not started
No deadline or prohibition was set. Congress funded digital and remote tower technology instead: section 40003(a)(13) of P.L. 119-21 provides $50,000,000 to carry out section 621 of the FAA Reauthorization Act of 2024 and to deploy remote tower technology at untowered airports, and the FAA's Brand New Air Traffic Control System program puts new digital equipment into 435 existing towers. Money for digital towers is not a bar on conventional ones, and no instrument gives the Air Traffic Organization a date after which it may not authorize or fund a nondigital tower - the FAA is still running the Contract Tower program and issued a competitive grant notice for it on 2026-01-21.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- Playbook section 3b, progress is measured on this ask: funding remote towers is adjacent to, but not, a deadline barring nondigital ones. Recorded as not started with both instruments attached so the page shows what did happen.
- Action
- restrict
- Object
- ATO authorization and funding of nondigital control towers
- ID
- 1744