Is the FAA Being Asked to Do Too Much?

I’ll go ahead and spoil the ending; yes, I think too much is being asked of the FAA right now.

It’s not so much the ‘what’ of the ask that is the problem, but the ‘how much’. The FAA has always been pulled in two directions at once. On the one hand, it needs to modernize quickly enough to keep pace with technology and industry demand. On the other, it needs to do that carefully enough to preserve the layered safety model that defines U.S. aviation.

There is nothing wrong with asking for more modernized air traffic control systems, nor is it wrong to study new technologies or evaluate how new industry demands can be safely integrated into the larger system. Safety and early-stage progress have always been (often competing) priorities the FAA has been expected to deal with.

What feels so different now, though, is the pace and magnatude of the priorities the administration is being asked to balance. The FAA is being told by the White House to accelerate the integration of BVLOS drones and advanced air mobility integration. It is being asked to increase system automation and fully build-out and implement a sweeping new air traffic modernization program. All-the-while, the pressure to move forward fast is arriving at the same time the agency is being forced, quite publicly, to confront what look to be long-standing cultural and structural safety gaps.

Pace vs. capacity inside the system

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation held a Thursday hearing with NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy. It offered a rare, public look at that ramped-up tension at the FAA.

The conversation was nominally about a single (albeit major) accident and equipment requirements, but it kept returning to something broader: how decisions move (or don’t) inside the FAA.

Homendy told senators that the collision followed “years of unheeded warnings,” adding that recommendations had been “rejected, sidelined, or just plain ignored.” She described a safety culture at the FAA where people were hesitant to speak openly with investigators. A culture in which individuals feared retaliation if they put a spotlight on existing problems.

Senators also asked questions about how the FAA uses (or sometimes doesn’t use) safety data, internal communication breakdowns and coordination (or lack thereof) between agencies.

The picture that emerged was fairly bleak. It was a picture not of a single point of failure, but of a system that struggled to translate warnings into action.

That matters now because the FAA is being asked to move faster than at any point in recent memory, and to do so on multiple fronts at once.

Modernization as opportunity—and execution risk

President Donald Trump asked for a full overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system last year, and it has already swung into motion. To be clear, that’s certainly not a bad thing and is a move that is widely viewed as necessary. Large portions of the current infrastructure date back decades, and officials have repeatedly pointed to aging equipment, reliability issues and rising traffic demand as reasons to accelerate replacement and upgrades.

The scale is unprecedented and includes nationwide communications, surveillance, automation and facility upgrades, alongside a broader push toward a new air traffic architecture later this decade.

On paper, the safety case is straightforward. Modern systems reduce equipment failures, improve situational awareness and give controllers tools that align with how aviation actually operates today.

But scale and timeline introduce their own pressures.

Executing a modernization program of this size requires sustained coordination across technical offices, operational units, contractors and regulators. It also depends on a culture that surfaces risk early and allows course correction without friction.

That’s the same environment lawmakers and investigators questioned in the aftermath of the DCA crash, citing long-term issues such as routes that had not been reviewed in decades, systematic communication barriers and safety concerns that came nowhere near reaching decision-makers.

Modernization is widely seen as the right move. The challenge is doing it well in what appears to be a problematic safety culture while the rest of the system is also changing.

Emerging technologies entering the airspace now

At the same time legacy infrastructure is being rebuilt, entirely new categories of aircraft and operations are moving toward routine use.

Federal policy has explicitly directed the FAA to accelerate integration of drones, beyond visual line of sight operations and advanced air mobility platforms. Programs tied to eVTOL and AAM deployment are coming from the White House, are being pushed with significant urgency, and are intended to generate data quickly and move promising concepts into fast, scalable operations.

The agency has even begun a recent internal reorganization to create offices focused on advanced aviation technologies and airspace modernization. Integration is no longer a future planning exercise but an active operational priority.

Oversight bodies have cautioned as recently as this month that integration is advancing alongside unresolved technical and operational questions. A new Government Accountability Office review of BVLOS operations found expansion is occurring and quickly ramping up even as core capabilities—such as detect-and-avoid technologies and standardized communications between aircraft types—remain under development.

The GAO also noted the FAA has described a long-term vision for an “information-centric” airspace but has not yet identified specific actions, timelines or clearly defined roles to achieve it.

That gap between a future architecture and present-day operations places more responsibility on procedures, automation and organizational safeguards while those capabilities mature. And it is up to an already-stressed FAA to bear the weight of those responsibilities safely.

The system absorbing everything at once

None of these developments exist in isolation. Modernization, advanced aircraft integration, automation and policy directives all feed into the same national airspace system, overseen by the same agency and influenced by the same organizational culture.

The FAA is not unique in facing that kind of convergence. Aviation has always evolved in waves, with technology, regulation and operations reshaping each other over time. What stands out now is the simultaneity: infrastructure replacement, new aircraft categories, new operating concepts and new performance expectations are all arriving together.

Aviation safety depends on layers. Technology, procedures, training, oversight and human judgment have always reinforced one another. When change occurs across multiple layers at once, as it is right now, maintaining that redundancy becomes much more complicated.

That does not mean progress should stop. Many of the initiatives underway are widely supported and overdue. But it does raise a practical question: whether the pace of integration is aligned with the system’s capacity to implement, monitor and adapt without missing signals along the way.

Thursday’s Senate hearing made clear that aviation’s safety margin is not defined only by equipment or regulations. It is shaped by how information moves, how concerns are elevated and how quickly the system responds when patterns appear.

The FAA is being asked to modernize infrastructure, integrate unprecidented new technologies and evolve its internal structure at the same time. Each of those efforts can strengthen safety. The challenge is ensuring the system absorbs them deliberately enough that speed does not outpace understanding—which I fear it is.

I, of course, hope I am wrong.