The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has awarded Verizon Communications a contract worth up to $2.4 billion over 15 years as the agency looks to modernize its systems.
Verizon will design, build and operate the FAA’s communications platform to support all of the agency’s mission critical applications across the National Airspace System.
Verizon said the infrastructure will support all of the agency’s mission critical applications across the National Airspace System, which includes providing Air Traffic Management to more than 45,000 daily flights and 2.9 million airline passengers traveling across 29 million square miles that make up the U.S. national airspace system.
Verizon Business CEO Kyle Malady said the project would help the FAA through a telecommunications infrastructure transformation that utilizes the latest advances in technology and networking solutions.
In January, the outage of a key pilot messaging database prompted a nationwide groundstop of U.S. passenger traffic, the first since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
A 2021 Transportation Department Office of Inspection General report cited challenges in the FAA’s multi-billion dollar Next Generation Air Transportation System infrastructure project.
