After LaGuardia – Where are we?

Over 50 years ago, when I served as an Air Force air traffic controller, the world of aviation looked very different from what most people imagine today. Our responsibility was enormous, but the tools we were given belonged to another era. Even as we moved aircraft in and out of some of the most volatile airspace on earth, we relied on Korean War-era radar scopes and related electronic equipment already outdated by the time it reached our hands.

I served in multiple TDY deployments around the world, including my time at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Vietnam, the air was thick with humidity, tension, and the constant churn of aircraft. Fighters, transports, medevacs, reconnaissance flights, civilian traffic threading through military patterns — it all came at us nonstop. And there we were, writing backward on plexiglass boards with grease pencils, tracking aircraft with a system that demanded speed, precision, and a kind of mental gymnastics that few outside the profession ever understood.

We made it work because we had to. The technology didn’t carry the load — we did. Controllers compensated with discipline, teamwork, and vigilance. The stakes were life and death, yet the support and resources we received rarely reflected the weight of the mission.

What surprises people is not that we used outdated equipment in Vietnam — it’s that the same thing is still happening today. When I left the Air Force, the FAA was beginning to roll out systems that were supposed to modernize the national airspace. If we got to use a scope with a stylus and cursor to ID targets we were impressed. They were hailed as the future. Yet many of those systems, or their barely updated descendants, are still in use right now.

The tools look modern. The screens are digital. But the backbone — the logic, the architecture, the limitations — would feel familiar to anyone who worked a scope in the 1960s or '70s. We’ve layered new displays on top of old systems. We’ve added automation without replacing the foundation. We’ve asked controllers to manage more aircraft, more complexity, and more pressure, while the underlying technology still carries the fingerprints of the era I served in.

And nothing illustrates that more clearly than the recent collision at LaGuardia, where an Air Canada commuter jet struck a fire truck while landing. The headlines focused on miscommunication and human error, but beneath that is a truth that hasn’t changed in half a century: Our air traffic control infrastructure is still running on aging technology, patched together and expected to handle traffic levels it was never designed for.

When I heard the controller’s urgent call — “Stop, stop, stop” — just moments before impact, it hit me in a place only controllers understand. One clearance, one misunderstood instruction, one moment of divided attention can unravel everything. Even with today’s advanced systems, the chain of events still comes down to the same thing it always has: Humans trying to manage a sky and a system that never stop moving.

If there is one moment in modern aviation history that captures the skill, discipline, and quiet heroism of air traffic controllers, it is what happened on Sept. 11, 2001. When the national ground stop was issued at 0945 that morning — the first and only time in U.S. history — controllers across the country were suddenly faced with a task no one had ever trained for: Clearing every aircraft out of American airspace, immediately, with no margin for error and no time to think.

And they did it.

By 1230, just two hours and 45 minutes later, the skies over the United States were empty. Thousands of aircraft safely on the ground. No midair collisions. No runway disasters. Under unimaginable pressure, with fear and uncertainty hanging over every frequency, the men and women watching those scopes performed one of the most remarkable feats in the history of aviation in my biased opinion.

I felt an overwhelming pride watching it unfold. It reminded me of the controllers I served with — their focus, their calm, their ability to take chaos and turn it into order. It reminded me that while technology may lag, the professionalism of the people behind the microphone has never wavered. And it reminded me that even in the darkest moments, the system still relies on the same thing it relied on when I was writing backward on plexiglass in Vietnam: The steady hands and clear minds of the controllers guiding aircraft safely home.

Almost 60 years later, I look back with pride at the work we did under conditions that would shock many people today. We kept aircraft moving, kept crews safe, and held the system together with little more than training, instinct, and sheer determination. But when I look at incidents like the recent crash at LaGuardia, I don’t just see a tragic moment — I see the same structural cracks that existed when I was writing backward on plexiglass in a crowded tower in Vietnam.

For all the talk of modernization, the truth is that our air traffic control system has been modernized mostly in appearance, not in substance. New screens have been placed on old foundations. Software has been layered over hardware that should have been retired decades ago. And through it all, the burden has remained exactly where it was in my day: On the controller’s shoulders.

That’s the part the public rarely sees. Controllers are expected to catch what the system misses, to compensate for its limitations, and to do it flawlessly, shift after shift, year after year. When something goes wrong, the headlines focus on human error. But after half a century of watching this profession from both inside and outside, I can tell you that the deeper issue is not the humans — it’s the system we keep asking them to prop up.

The LaGuardia collision is a reminder that aviation safety is not a finished project. It’s a living responsibility, one that demands more than incremental upgrades and temporary fixes. It demands the same level of commitment we expected from controllers in wartime: clarity, investment, and respect for the stakes involved. I am proud of the work my generation did with the tools we had. But I also know we shouldn’t be asking today’s controllers to fight the same battles we fought with technology that should have been replaced long ago. The skies have changed. The traffic has changed. The world has changed. It’s time for the system to change with it.

Mark Fritz served as a U.S. Air Force air traffic controller during the Vietnam era and completed multiple TDY deployments around the world. He lives in Howard and sits on the Knox County Airport Authority. He remains an advocate for aviation safety and meaningful modernization of America’s air traffic control system.