by Donald Wood
Last updated: 8:50 AM ET, Tue May 9, 2023
Officials from the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) said proposed budget cuts would result in the
federal agency cutting jobs and freezing hiring for new air traffic controllers,
moves that could result in chaos at airports during the busy summer travel
season.
According to The
Associated Press, FAA Acting Administrator Billy Nolen said in a report to
Congress that the agency is on its way toward meeting the goal of adding 1,500 air
traffic controllers by September, but the cuts would impact those plans.
In addition, Nolen revealed that proposed budget cuts would
also slow down the FAA’s goals of modernizing technology, including upgrades to
an alert
system that failed in January and briefly grounded planes around the United
States.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation to
raise the debt ceiling and keep the government functioning, but added cuts to domestic
spending and other caveats introduced by Republican lawmakers are likely to
keep the bill from becoming law.
“Despite these efforts, the spending cuts recently passed by
the House of Representatives would wreak havoc on summer air travel,” Nolen
said.
Republicans are hoping the budget cuts force President Joe
Biden to the table to negotiate and “accept deeper domestic cuts than he would
prefer.”
Last week, a new report from a government watchdog suggests
several top FAA officials overruled
pleas from engineers to ground the Boeing 737 MAX planes after two deadly
crashes.
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