U.S. aviation technology is ‘an embarrassment,' former exec says

The Federal Aviation Administration has faced mounting pressure in recent months, with air traffic control outages and staffing shortages raising serious concerns about safety. David Grizzle, former COO at the FAA, joined TheStreet to explain what’s gone wrong, and what must happen now to fix it.

Related: Former FAA exec sounds alarm on ‘failing’ air traffic system

Full Video Transcript Below:

DAVID GRIZZLE: There are two things that are imperative that we do right away in order to fix the challenges that we're facing right now. The first is for Congress to allocate adequate budget to the FAA to begin merely arresting the descent of the technology at the FAA. It then needs to provide budget to begin putting in a new system, a state of the art system that is not an embarrassment to the United States of America. The second thing they need is leadership leaders who will take advantage of the special procurement and hiring authority that the FAA has. That's different from what any other government agency has, which will be necessary in order to accelerate the deployment of this new technology.

I will say that Secretary Duffy is the most engaged Secretary of Transportation, with aviation, of any Secretary that we have seen. And he is completely on top of this problem. He understands it. He gets it. He spent a lot of time at the FAA, and he is right now advocating on the Hill for the budget that he needs, which has. There are two, really two critical elements to the budget that the Secretary is seeking. One is merely the size of the budget, but the second is to create the budget structurally so that it's not subject to constant interruptions. Every time there is a threat, even of a government shutdown, even one that doesn't occur.