In the aftermath of a series of aviation accidents this year that left travelers on edge, the federal government has unveiled an ambitious plan to upgrade and overhaul U.S. air traffic control systems.

The Epoch Times asked pilots and aviation safety experts about Duffy’s plan and their thoughts on how to make aviation, already the safest form of travel, even safer.

Scott Seeberger, a veteran pilot for a U.S. airline, told The Epoch Times that improving aviation safety should start with a two-prong approach.

Many pilots and aviation experts told The Epoch Times that control towers are understaffed and current controllers are overworked.

“They’re stressed out because of the workload they have to handle,” Seeberger said. “We’ve got to increase hiring. We have to increase training.”

Duffy’s plan to offer deferred-retirement bonuses could be great for controller staffing shortages, particularly if it keeps the most experienced in the workforce who can act as mentors for new trainees, he said.

“As long as they’re physically fit, they’re doing the job well, as professionals, they should be able to work,” Seeberger said.

Richard Levy, an aviation safety expert and former American Airlines pilot, said having additional workers in the control towers means extra sets of eyes using binoculars and listening on the radio.

“It’s another set of controllers just watching, as a supervisor does, to have a backup in case something slips by,” Levy told The Epoch Times.

Increasing air traffic control staffing is essential because the workforce is taxed with long shifts, few days off, and high-stress work environments, which reduce “their ability to catch other people’s mistakes,” said Shawn Pruchnicki, safety expert, former pilot, and aviation professor at Ohio State University.

“Controllers watch pilots to see if we mess up, and pilots watch controllers to see if they mess up,“ Pruchnicki said. ”So that backup is reduced as well because of [controllers’] level of fatigue, because of what they’re forced to do.”

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Increasing the number of workers on staff could mean that all controllers are better rested and focused, according to Pruchnicki.

“That is a significant start in sending this back in the right direction, to increase that margin of safety that’s been eroded,” he told The Epoch Times.

Jacob Kyser, vice president of Universal Flight Training in Sarasota, Florida, told The Epoch Times that U.S. air traffic controllers are some of the best in the world. Yet they “catch a lot of heat” whenever there are aviation incidents, such as the midair collision near Washington earlier this year.

He said it must have been difficult for the controller who was on staff the evening of that deadly incident, particularly as many cast blame on the controller for handling frequencies for both helicopters and airplanes that night, which Kyser said is “so normal, you wouldn’t even believe how [often] it happens all across the country.”

Kyser, who also works as a flight instructor, said the midair collision was “truly unfortunate.”

“We really need a complete remodernization system to handle the large number of aircraft that are flying, because it’s only going to increase as we look forward in the future,” he told The Epoch Times. “More people are flying, more aircraft are in the air, so the system has got to be modernized to be able to handle this capacity.”

Pruchnicki said the ground radar sensors could prevent runway collisions or near misses but are currently only in use at select airports.

The aviation modernization plan includes expanding this technology to all major airports nationwide, according to Duffy.

If there is another key part of the FAA’s technological infrastructure that could benefit from upgrades and improvements, it is Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) alerts, said Shem Malmquist, aviation safety expert, former pilot, and professor of aeronautics at Florida Institute of Technology.

More critically, current NOTAM alerts are too cryptic and hard to read, even for veteran pilots, Malmquist told The Epoch Times.

Moments before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine by Russian-backed forces in 2014, the pilots received alerts that were a string of code numbers and a few words about temporarily restricted airspace.

The pilots should have instead received an easy-to-read warning letting them know that 14 aircraft had been shot down in that area in the previous three months alone, according to Malmquist.

“A lot of this could be done a lot better by just making it plain language, instead of these cryptic codes,” he said, noting that when the alerts were invented decades ago, they were issued via teletype and had to be coded.

“Now we have way better technology, and we should be able to sort it, make it plain language, make it display graphically.”

According to Levy, while humans can catch separations between aircraft, AI “can catch it a lot faster.”

For example, the AI could see an airplane about to intrude on the airspace of another long before the potential incursion is caught by someone in the control tower. The system could send an alert to the controllers to stop departures on whichever runway is affected at the particular airport, he said.

“So people backing up people, artificial intelligence backing up people ... that only makes it better and less risk taken,” Levy told The Epoch Times.

However, AI is not advanced enough to make decisions for people and should only support human decision-making, both Malmquist and Kyser said.

“So-called AI is nowhere close to being able to do anything other than trying to mimic people’s writing ability, it’s nowhere close to being able to handle unusual scenarios, which is why we want the person there,” Malmquist said.

He noted that properly designed software and automation can be used to augment human decision-making so that pilots and controllers can get by with less.

Kyser, who works at a flight training school next to Sarasota Bradenton International Airport, said opening communication between the various stakeholders in the industry could lead to increased safety.

The local airport authority decided to start having quarterly meetings for the local tower controllers, airlines, and flight schools to discuss ways to improve operations, he said.

“It’s our one opportunity per quarter, four times a year, to get with them and actually say, ‘Hey, what are we doing wrong?‘“ he said. ”’What could we do better?’ And then they actually sit there and say, ‘What are we doing wrong? What could we do better?’”

As for Duffy’s plan to overhaul U.S. air traffic control in the next three to four years, both men warned about making too many safety-critical changes in such a short time frame.

Kyser said any major changes, even if they start in New Jersey or New York City airspace, will eventually trickle down to every airspace nationwide. He also said the Transportation Department’s overhaul plans would be tough to achieve in three to four years.

Malmquist said that while upgrades are needed, any changes introduced to a system will inevitably lead to new anomalies.

“Most accidents occur after some sort of change,“ he said. ”So you make a major change, and you are opening yourself up to new scenarios that you just didn’t anticipate at all.

“What that’s going to do is put more burden on the pilots to try to prevent accidents where the system isn’t working the way we expect.”