U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg touted safety improvements being made at several of the nation's airports during a tour of four airports receiving federal funding for upgrades.
"Good design and wise investments can reduce the chances for close calls or crashes," Buttigieg stated in a March 30 Twitter post highlighting his tour of the Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT) in North Carolina. "Work at @CLTAirport will reduce the need for planes to cross active runways and improve safety on our airfields."
CLT was one of four airports that Buttigieg last week to promote infrastructure projects supported by President Joe Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The others are the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW), where a similar end-around taxiway is being built; the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport (LIT) in Little Rock, Ark.; and Federal Aviation Administration's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center in Oklahoma City.
During his visit to the Clinton National Airport, Buttigieg highlighted the recent rise in aviation-related incidents where planes have come close to colliding with each other on the ground and in the air, according to UA Little Rock Public Radio.
"While they remain extremely rare, it is a reality that we must confront that in recent months we've seen an increase in the number of those close calls," Buttigieg said during the tour. "There are more mistakes than usual happening across the system on runways and gates, in control towers and on flight decks. That is something we must confront proactively, and we are."
Buttigieg visited Dallas-Fort Worth International (DFW) airport and announced the Federal Aviation Administration's pledge of $29 million more to DFW, the nation’s second busiest airport behind Atlanta, for a new “end-around taxiway.” Airport officials say the project, expected to be completed in 2025, will do away with planes taxiing across main runways, the Associated Press reports.
He said the aviation industry is going through the most changes it has since the introduction of the jet engine when he toured Oklahoma City's Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center, an air traffic-controller training facility.
Buttigieg cited the increasing use of drones, the advent of artificial intelligence and other challenges and said the training center "might be the single location in the United States of America that can do the most to help address this because of the expertise that's here, because of the insight that is here, because of the equipment that's here to run scenarios and test different things," the Oklahoman reported.
