A leading lawmaker from the nation’s most interconnected air travel state warned that outdated technology – like “floppy disks” – and ongoing air traffic control (ATC) crises at key hubs are compounding the need to overhaul the U.S. air travel system.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, who also sits on the Aviation subcommittee on the Senate Commerce and Transportation Committee, spoke to Fox News Digital exclusively on Wednesday as the crisis mounted, most recently in the Philadelphia ATC sector; specifically at Newark-Liberty International Airport.

The Last Frontier has the least miles of roads per capita and hundreds of communities where air travel is the only relatively realistic or reliable mode.

Sullivan said that it is not only in his state’s interest to see such an overhaul, but that – just as the Philadelphia sector has seen issues as of late – the Anchorage air traffic control hub itself controls individual flight patterns almost anywhere between Chicago and Tokyo.

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“We help the entire country when people are traveling from the Lower 48 over to Asia,” he said.

“What we need to do is we need to preemptively address challenges before they become tragedies,” said Sullivan, who spoke out similarly at a commerce hearing with NTSB and FAA officials earlier this year.

He also cited a February passenger airliner crash in his own state, when a plane went down on Norton Sound’s sea ice after leaving Unalakleet for Nome, killing 10.

“What happens, unfortunately, is too often tragedy is what inspires and motivates reform,” he said, adding that the Department of Transportation should and likely will, under Secretary Sean Duffy, pivot to “predict[ing] and preempt[ing].”

On a recent tour of the Anchorage center, he spoke to FAA workers and saw how they, like other sectors, rely on 20th-century floppy disks and “strips of paper that are like post-it notes.”

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Crash of Bering Air 208B near Unalakleet, Alaska. (NTSB)

“What we don’t want, unfortunately – it’s happened – is have a big crash and tragedy as the thing that inspires change,” he said, placing the blame most recently on the Biden administration, in part, for appearing to prioritize diversity over substantive reforms at USDOT.

“I watched this: Hiring people for the FAA in terms of air traffic controllers is competitive. It requires real schooling. It requires high performance. And the Biden team came in, and I guess in the name of diversity… they started taking people off the street literally with no background in any of this. We’ve got to get back to the rigorous FAA standards,” he said.

He said he spoke with Duffy on Tuesday and predicted “a really big comprehensive reform program” in the weeks and months to come.  

Newark Airport in New Jersey (Getty)

“We have the safest aviation system in the world, but that doesn’t happen through magic. That happens through diligence, through upgrading our technology.”

While not directly addressing the situation in Newark, Sullivan praised the Trump administration’s “outstanding” response to the Unalakleet crash and predicted the Department of Transportation would handle the Newark-Liberty incident in a similarly effective manner.

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has defended his tenure, writing on X that “we put safety first, drove down close calls, grew [ATC] and had zero commercial airline fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch.”

Parents and educators got to bring their concerns directly to San Francisco school, fire and police leaders on Wednesday following two recent fires at an elementary school.

Two recent fires happened Lafayette Elementary School in San Francisco’s Richmond neighborhood.

The most recent fire happened at a playground late Sunday night and two weeks ago, someone set Lafayette PTA’s storage shed ablaze and destroyed everything.

“Two separate incidents so that’s really scary,” said San Francisco parent Cameron Archer. “I think we’re all concerned. I’m definitely concerned something worse could happen.”

The San Francisco Fire Department is calling both investigations arson.

Parents and educators voiced their concerns to fire and district leaders during a meeting at Lafayette Elementary School auditorium Wednesday night.

San Francisco police said they are gathering evidence for who would leave the playground in ashes.They are also looking at footage from the school and neighborhood and promising more patrols in the area day and night.

Gia Vang has more in the video above.

DENVER — In November 2022, 70% of Denver voters approved the Waste No More ballot initiative to require city apartment buildings, businesses and large events to provide recycling and composting services. It would also establish new recycling and composting requirements for large events and construction and demolition sites.

Two years later, enforcement is still on hold as the city works on how to put the ordinance into action.

Earlier this month, Denver7 spoke with city leaders about that process.

“Those big systems changes also come with complications,” said Jonathan Wachtel, deputy executive director for the Denver Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency. “They come with costs.”

“You can have a climate-friendly city and a business-friendly city at the same time, and we’ve been very thoughtful about how we’ve approached it,” said Tim Hoffman, director of policy for Mayor Mike Johnston’s office.

Hoffman added that he “completely” understands the frustration some have with the ordinance not being implemented more than two years after passing.

Brian Loma, an environmental advocate and one of the original proponents of the ordinance, is feeling that frustration. He said Denver is “lagging behind” other Colorado cities that are implementing their own Zero Waste policies.

“The intent was for Denver to be the leader, the largest city in the state of Colorado doing the hard work to show everybody else it can be done,” he said Wednesday. “It’s a matter of civic pride.”

After discussions with advocates and the business community, the city is now proposing exceptions to the ordinance.

“Making sure that we weren’t putting undue burdens on small businesses, small restaurants, small events,” said Hoffman.

For example, restaurants with 25 or fewer employees who made $2 million or less in revenue the previous year would be exempt from the composting requirement. Loma said that should not be an excuse.

“My business doesn’t do $100,000 a year, and I compost and recycle as much as humanly possible,” he said. “It’s not about how much business you do. It’s about how much waste you produce.”

In their own waste management ordinances, cities like Boulder and Longmont have exemptions for businesses facing “economic hardship” situations. Longmont specifically spells out an exemption for businesses whose losses from the prior fiscal year were more than 10 percent of gross sales.

But Loma said an exemption solely based on profits and employee count would be unique and unnecessary.

“The point of Waste No More was to get people to talk about their waste plans,” he said. “Create a plan on how to divert and then look at what the costs are and determine if that would be a hardship or not, not to carve out and just say a whole bunch of people are exempt before you even come up with a plan.”

That being said, Loma clarified that he and the other originators of the ballot measure want to discuss and meet somewhere in the middle with city leaders.

On Wednesday, Denver City Council’s business committee pushed the next conversation to July, but with a sense of urgency.

“There’s been so much work done and I don’t want the policy to flounder or to take more time when we need to get this implemented in, because stuff is going into the landfill as we speak,” Denver City Councilmember Stacie Gilmore said during Wednesday’s committee meeting.

Ordinance enforcement is slated to begin in April 2026, but city leaders suggested during the meeting that further delays in finalizing exemptions would put that timeline in jeopardy.

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