A deadly midair collision in January between a military helicopter and a commercial airliner, several additional crashes and technical problems that resulted in mass cancellations at New Jersey’s biggest airport have prompted officials to pledge a fix for the nation’s air traffic control system.

Doing so, they say, would help ensure safety and prevent the kind of problems that have plagued the Newark, N.J., airport since its radar system briefly failed earlier this month.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy last week was scheduled to unveil a multi-billion-dollar plan to overhaul the nation’s air traffic control system, while the Federal Aviation Administration works to quickly solve technology and staffing problems in Newark and avoid similar problems elsewhere.

Analysts say the aging system struggles to handle the nation’s more than 45,000 daily flights.

It’s uncertain whether Duffy’s plan that President Donald Trump supports will get the necessary congressional funding to be more effective than previous reform efforts during the last three decades, but Duffy says it’s necessary.

Already more than $14 billion has been invested in upgrades since 2003 but none have dramatically changed how the system works.

“We are on it. We are going to fix it. We are going to build a brand new system for all of you and your families and the American people,” Duffy said.

For years, the system has operated well enough to be largely neglected by every administration, said University of Illinois professor Sheldon Jacobson, who has studied risks in aviation. “But well enough isn’t good enough when it comes to air travel because people’s lives are at risk.”

Jacobson said he is skeptical Duffy’s proposal will succeed, but there could be renewed support following the collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter over Washington D.C. in January, and a plane that flipped and caught fire in Toronto.

Problems in the nation’s air traffic control system have for years been highlighted in reports and hearings.

Most recently, a Government Accountability Office review released in March declared that 51 of the FAA’s 138 systems were considered unsustainable and another 54 were potentially unsustainable. A 2023 outage in FAA’s Notice to Airmen system forced the grounding of every flight nationwide for more than two hours.

“We’re dealing with an outmoded system and we have an outdated infrastructure,” said former Continental Airlines CEO Frank Lorenzo, who helped establish a major hub in Newark that United Airlines still maintains years after acquiring Continental.

The FAA has made incremental improvements as part of its Nextgen program that was established in 2003.

Advancements include development of the ADS-B system that provides more precise aircraft locations to controllers and other planes. That system has been a focal point of the investigation of the January crash because the Black Hawk helicopter was not using it to broadcast its location at the time of the collision.

Duffy has also tried to increase air traffic controller hiring by shortening the time it takes to get into the academy and improving student success rates.

A challenge to upgrading the aviation infrastructure is that the FAA must keep the current system operating while developing a new system — and then find a way to seamlessly switch over. That’s partly why the agency has pursued more gradual improvements in the past.

“The problem has existed for decades. It’s not because of neglect, but because it’s a hard problem to solve,” said Jeff Guzetti, who is a former accident investigator who also worked in the Transportation Department’s Inspector General’s office. “And it requires money and good management. And the FAA has had shortages of both money and in some cases good management for years.”