Jeff Denham: “I rise this morning because the House must continue its work to reform and reauthorize the FAA. We have got to pass H.R.…”

“I rise this morning because the House must continue its work to reform and reauthorize the FAA. We have got to pass H.R. 2997, the 21st Century AIRR Act. Thirty years ago--30 years ago--the FAA identified the need to modernize or upgrade the Nation's antiquated World War II era air traffic control system. This is a system, at the time, that used radar technology and paper strips for communications between controllers. They literally would take these paper slips and hand them from one controller to the next controller to the next controller as aircraft not only moved through the airwaves, but were moving through the airport systems. Now, over the last 30 years, Canada, Australia, and many in the EU have changed to this GPS system. We have got countries all across the globe going to GPS, or decades ago have already switched. It is when they go through our airspace, we still use this old radar technology. Now, during this time, we have upgraded GPS systems. We all carry around handheld devices that use GPS: the Wave app, Google app. There are many different mapping platforms that allow you to get through cities, towns, the countryside. If there is an accident, there is a delay, it allows you to get around it and move through so that we can actually have greater efficiencies on the road.…”