Rep. Sharice Davids urges investment in air traffic control

Kansas Congresswoman Sharice Davids was in Olathe on Wednesday to tour the Air Route air traffic control center.

Davids emphasized the urgent need to invest in air traffic control staffing and safety infrastructure following the deadly air collision of flight 5342 and a military helicopter earlier this year.

Davids is part of a House committee putting a big focus on modernizing outdated systems, including those used to safely land aircrafts.

She claimed that in Kansas alone, 81 percent of these systems are “functionally obsolete.”

“We recently passed the FAA reauthorization,” Davids said. “At the same time we’re looking at how to invest and upgrading the technology, the computer system, the ways that pilots and air traffic controllers are communicating with each other -- and we also need to be making sure and we put this in the FAA reauthorization that we figure out how to invest in the people that are running all of these systems.”

Davids’ renewed push for safety reforms comes as the FAA employs fewer than 11,000 certified controllers, well below recommended levels. The FAA is one of several agencies affected by federal layoffs.