$500 million more may be needed for ATC upgrade

The FAA may need to spend $500 million more to complete an air-traffic upgrade by Lockheed Martin Co. that is behind schedule and exceeding costs, according to a report at Bloomberg.com, which quotes the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General Calvin Scovel as saying 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. “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 was quoted.