The Federal Aviation Administration may need to spend $500 million more to complete an air-traffic upgrade by Lockheed Martin Co. that is behind schedule and exceeding costs, a Transportation Department inspector said. Completing the En Route Automation Modernization project will take as many as six more years, compared with the original goal of finishing by the end of this year, Calvin Scovel, the department inspector general, wrote in a letter to lawmakers that was released today.
“A cost escalation of this magnitude will affect FAA’s capital budget and could force the agency to reallocate funds from other modernization projects to pay for” the Lockheed program, Scovel wrote.
The ERAM project, which has cost $1.8 billion so far, will replace a 43-year-old system that directs aircraft at high altitudes in an effort to boost safety and efficiency in the world’s busiest airspace. It was originally projected to cost $2.1 billion as one of the FAA’s largest acquisition projects.
The project will cost $70 million, or 53 percent, more than the FAA planned to spend in the current fiscal year to correct system flaws, Scovel said.
The FAA said last April that the project may be delayed after computer flaws forced the system’s removal five days after its first activation in Salt Lake City.
Lockheed is replacing the computers, which the FAA calls the “backbone” of the airspace system, that process radar data and send information to controllers’ screens. The new system, replacing one in use since 1967, will let 20 traffic-control centers track 1,900 aircraft at one time rather than 1,100, Lockheed has said.
