Air Traffic Control

Although GAO found no evidence that Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decisions for locating and replacing air traffic control equipment did not meet the critical needs of the nation's aviation system, FAA's process for selecting sites for facilities and equipment was not consistent among the three projects GAO reviewed. Moreover, FAA lacked documentation showing the factors that program sponsors considered in making location decisions. Current FAA guidance does not require a numerical ranking of locations on a national basis, define what emphasis should be given to location-specific benefit-cost analyses or other factors, or specify what documentation is required when evaluating and selecting locations. GAO believes that good business management of proposed capital investments requires a more analytically based decision process. Improved guidance could help FAA better assure Congress and aviation system users that it is making the best use of available funds in allocating facilities and equipment to high-priority locations.

GAO found that: (1) FAA has funded the three projects in accordance with its own guidance and has fairly distributed facilities and equipment among its nine regional offices on a priority basis; (2) although FAA bases its project funding decisions on the availability of regional staff to implement the projects, it generally does not rank locations nationally or numerically, use cost-benefit analyses to rank eligible locations, or document the factors used to prioritize certain locations; (3) FAA believes that its approach for locating facilities and distributing equipment ensures that its limited resources are targeted to high-priority needs; (4) FAA believes that ranking each location on a national basis would be cost-prohibitive, create tensions among regional offices, favor large airports, and exclude safety factors that outweigh economic considerations; (5) current FAA guidance does not include provisions that specify how prospective locations will be evaluated; (6) FAA needs to develop a more analytically based decisionmaking process for ranking eligible locations; and (7) improved selection guidance could help FAA better ensure that it is making the best use of available resources in allocating facilities and equipment to high-priority locations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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