By CONGRESSMAN NICK BEGICH
Aviation affects nearly every single Alaskan. Only 22% of our state is connected to a road system. The rest of our communities, especially in rural areas, rely on aviation for their groceries, for their mail, or to transport patients in medical emergencies.
From bush pilots in Nome to air traffic controllers in Anchorage, our skies are the critical infrastructure that remains a hallmark of everyday life in Alaska. Air safety is deeply personal, and it’s why I’ve made it a top priority in Congress.
In October 1972, my grandfather, Rep. Nick Begich Sr., disappeared aboard a twin-engine Cessna 310 flying from Anchorage to Juneau. Despite one of the largest search efforts in American history, the aircraft and its four occupants were never found. The tragedy changed my family forever. It also exposed critical gaps in aviation safety at the time — gaps that, tragically, still persist in too many parts of our airspace system today.
America was once the gold standard in aviation technology. But over the past two decades, our infrastructure has stagnated while the demands on our system have only grown. Today, the Federal Aviation Administration employs 2,300 fewer certified air traffic controllers than needed. Controllers are being asked to do more with less — working mandatory overtime, managing increasingly congested airspace, and doing so with outdated radar and voice systems that in some cases predate the internet.
I recently introduced the bipartisan Air Traffic Control Workforce Development Act of 2025, legislation that invests in the people who make our skies safe. This bill improves recruitment and retention incentives, enhances mental health support, funds state-of-the-art tower simulators, and strengthens the training pipeline for new controllers. It is backed by industry leaders and labor organizations alike and is the House companion to Senate legislation introduced earlier this year.
But fixing the staffing shortage is just one part of the broader modernization challenge. We also need a 21st-century air traffic control system, one that uses fiber optics, satellite technology, and real-time data to give pilots and controllers the tools they need to make faster, smarter, and safer decisions.
The Don Young Alaska Aviation Safety Initiative, which recently delivered $25 million in critical improvements to our aviation infrastructure, is a strong example of what partnership between Congress and the FAA can achieve. As a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I worked with committee leadership to include $260 million for the Don Young Alaska Aviation Safety Initiative in the committee’s budget reconciliation proposal. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the House and Senate to pass this proposal out of Congress and to the president’s desk.
President Donald Trump and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy recently laid out a plan to overhaul our air traffic control system. Their initiative calls for upgrading more than 4,600 air traffic sites with cutting-edge communications and radar equipment; replacing towers and Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities with modern, standardized platforms; and building six new coordination centers for the first time in over 60 years. It’s a long-overdue investment that I fully support.
I commend the administration for its focus on aviation safety, and I look forward to working with Trump and Duffy as a member of the House Subcommittee on Aviation to ensure Alaska and rural America are not left behind in this transformation.
The risks of delay are real, and they are growing. Without immediate action, overworked air traffic controllers will continue to manage increasing traffic with aging equipment. Fatigue and staffing shortages will heighten the risk of near misses. Our nation, home to some of the busiest and most complex airspace in the world, deserves better.
Upgrading our aviation system will greatly reduce flight delays and improve efficiency, but more than that, it will save lives. No family should have to experience the kind of loss mine did over 50 years ago due to an aviation-related tragedy.
America is still a beacon of innovation. We lead the world in so many fields: energy, space, medicine, technology, etc. There is no reason why we cannot lead in aviation once again. But leadership requires investment, vision, and political will.
Let’s train the next generation of air traffic controllers, modernize our infrastructure, and bring air safety into the 21st century. The skies over Alaska and across our nation deserve nothing less.
Nick Begich represents Alaska’s At-Large Congressional District in the House of Representatives and serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s Subcommittee on Aviation. This column first ran in the Washington Examiner.
Safer skies start with the FAA enforcing existing VFR rules. FARs are violated every day and such violations often lead to lethal accidents. VFR pilots flying through clouds and below 500ft AGL over rural areas and below 1000ft AGL in urban areas. FSDO starts doing their job and the skies will get safer.
No, Congress man Begich, safe skies in Alaska will be when you finally get back to me and explain who is Chem trailing our State every day. I have made four efforts to your office to get some answers and I have yet to have anyone get back to me with some sort of answer. The Governor’s office says to call the Senatorial, Congressional offices. It’s like playing a big shell game within the government. It is happening over the skys of Alaska daily and someone is responsible, and we have a right to know who and if they are using microplastics. Is it tied to Bill Gates? Is it tied to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and HAARP? Who and why are they being allowed to play God in our Alaska skies? We the People have not anointed this operation!
Whee the deluded, have been watching too much T.V.
Fyi, it is a great job….damn shame one must know math. That is an issue in hiring.
If you are not working harm to learn math you’re going to have challenges and doors that will not open
Nicely written & enforceable policy initiative by Nick.
Rep Begich states that the loss of his Grandfather in a flight starting in Anchorage to Juneau in the middle of an Oct snow storm exposed critical
gaps in aviation safety in Alaska.
What happened was that the U.S. Speaker of the house of representatives Hale Boggs, Rep Begich, an aid by the name of Brown, and the Pilot Don Jonz took off in a Cessna twin engine Cessna 310 from Anchorage into terrible weather in early October and disappeared forever.
The plane was not equipped with de-icing equipment and the pilot from
Fairbanks had very little experience flying in the Prince William Sound area which was and is notorious for bad icing conditions. The loss of these four was a direct result of pilot error in choosing to fly in those terrible icing conditions that existed at the time.
Pilot error has been the cause of tragic aircraft deaths ever since Wilber and Orville Wright’s flights. It has been a safety issue starting from the beginning of aviation travel and will be around for the foreseeable future. It is not a critical gap in aviation safety. It is a Grand Canyon sized chasm. And as the saying goes, you can’t fix stupid.
Please Rep Begich, tell us the solution that will fill this “gap”.
From https://mustreadalaska.com/faa-hiring-targets-people-with-psychiatric-problems-and-severe-mental-disabilities-urged-to-apply/:
“The FAA’s targeted disabilities for hiring are, in the agency’s own words:
Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
Vision (Blind)
Missing Extremities
Partial Paralysis
Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
Severe intellectual disability
Psychiatric disability
Dwarfism”
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Is this still a thing, Congressman?
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Maybe this should be corrected –before– “upgrading air traffic control training, infrastructure” which, roughly translated, means farm everything out to some contractor like Lockheed-Martin who’s patiently waiting with a lowball bid to make it all okay, at least for the moment?
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Congressman, we trust you to ask hard-nose questions like: “How’s “upgrading air traffic control training, infrastructure” supposed to work if journeymen and trainees are too dumb, burnt out, DEI’d, psychotic, or otherwise incompetent to operate it properly?
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…or How’s “upgrading air traffic control training, infrastructure” supposed to work when the only training you get is some contractor reading verbatim from a Power Point presentation?
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…or What’s the ratio of administrative, management, contract, and support employees to actual air traffic controllers and maintenance employees; how has that ratio changed since, say, year 2000?
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…or How have the safety ssues with Boeing aircraft apparently escaped the attention of FAA inspectors and what’s been done to correct the situation?
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…or Identify FAA’s data networks operating on contractors’ proprietary software, invisible to FAA, or operating on FAA’s obsolete software, vulnerable to intrusion?
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…or Describe FAA’s technical-inspection program that assures FAA’s infrastructure operates according to specifications and inspectors’ job qualification standards.
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…or Why should pilot training, especially in Alaska, not include certified weather observer qualification and standardized weight-and-balance instruction?
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Questions like these and more you could ask, Congressman, we’d love to hear their answers.
“Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
Vision (Blind)
Missing Extremities
Partial Paralysis
Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
Severe intellectual disability
Psychiatric disability
Dwarfism”
Answers to the name of “Lucky”
You’re not worth responding to Tim. Curiously Tim all the big crashes lately have been IFR flights. On IFR flight plans.
Your ignorance is on full display. Well done.
Safer skies also come from prosecuting corporations that knowingly put out a faulty product and kill 300 plus people, but hey look what your lying Russian loving President buddies DOJ just did…. Save me the opinion piece Nicky.
Hay Tim how about the 55.000 people killed on our road system every year. How are those laws s working out for you.???
You won’t fix air traffic control problems or make aviation safer without first completely overhauling the FAA and cleaning out the huge amount of deadwood there.
Thanks for the initiative and for keeping us informed, Congressman. Beware the giant sucking money pit that is the FAA bureaucracy – remember Ted Stevens “Air 21 Fund” modernization for the 21st century, that got gobbled up by the ATC union and bureaucratic bonuses and raises? Less than 20% went to modernization, and the pay raises permanently increased the FAA budget demands.