Air travel is the safest mode of transportation, but that’s cold comfort to flyers rattled by a series of deadly crashes, near misses, radio outages, and blank radar screens at airports around the U.S.

The mishaps — including a January mid-air collision between a passenger jet and Army helicopter that killed 67 people in Washington, D.C. — have revealed serious cracks in the nation’s aviation infrastructure. And those gaps have been growing for some time, said Wharton professor Gad Allon.

“What you see here is a neglect of years,” he said, referring to the critical shortage of air traffic controllers, antiquated technology, and limited backup systems. “These are extremely, extremely important infrastructure decisions. A neglect of years has brought us to where we are.”

Allon, who is a professor in the Department of Operations, Information and Decisions, spoke to Wharton Business Daily about the need for a comprehensive, long-term, and well-funded approach to managing America’s airports. He said short-term solutions, like the $25 billion allocated over five years in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act or the shuffling of air traffic controllers to cover vacancies, is inadequate.

“It just solves the issue for now, but that will just kick the ball down the street,” he said. (Listen to the podcast.)

“What you see here is a neglect of years.”— Gad Allon

Allon said a broader rethinking is required, and he encouraged decision-makers to consider worst-case scenarios as their baseline. During the deadly crash in D.C., a lone air traffic controller was at work. At Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, recent communications outages have prompted officials to restrict flights to 56 an hour until mid-June to ease congestion and workload.

“Treat a near-accident as an accident,” he said. “In Newark, we have to think about that situation of what if 170 planes in the air crashed during that time? How much budget would we pay at that time to try to fix those issues?”

Allon said decision-makers also need to accurately price the cost of technology investments required to modernize the system, make a long-term budget, and determine how roles will change as more technology comes online.

“These are issues that are going to reappear again and again and again, every five years, unless we solve them in a much more programmatic way for the next 30 years,” he said.

Air Traffic Controllers Are an Asset

The nationwide shortage of air traffic controllers is acute, with nearly every facility in the country understaffed, according to a New York Times analysis. At Newark, there are 22 controllers instead of the recommended 38, and they work out of Philadelphia. The Federal Aviation Administration made an operational decision to move the Newark controllers from Long Island, N.Y., to Philadelphia last year.

“That was done against the advice of the union, against the advice from many air traffic controllers,” Allon said.

“This is a long-term change that requires you to bring people on, to get them to buy in.”— Gad Allon

He said new technology will alleviate controller workload, but it should not be implemented without their participation.

“This is a long-term change that requires you to bring people on, to get them to buy in,” he said. “There’s an aspect here of reducing the dependency, but that cannot be done against the consult of the people actually doing the work.”

Allon compared the handling of air infrastructure with road infrastructure, which often takes priority. In 2023, a fiery crash collapsed an overpass of Interstate 95 in Northeast Philadelphia. Officials moved quickly to build a temporary roadway within two weeks, averting what could have been months or years of crippling traffic and economic loss.

“But we don’t treat [air traffic] with the same urgency,” he said. “We need to have the same level of urgency we have with respect to roads.”