The Biden administration is in search of further funding for the Federal Aviation Administration, funds that intention to spice up hiring of air site visitors controllers and facilitate different enhancements to handle more and more congested airspace.

The White Home on Thursday proposed $16.5 billion for the company, up from the $15.2 billion the FAA acquired in fiscal 2023. The request would enhance funding for the Nationwide Airspace System to $3.5 billion, up $500 million, to enhance the programs that oversee the nation’s airspace “to securely accommodate the expansion in conventional industrial aviation site visitors alongside new entrants from the industrial house, unmanned plane, and superior air mobility industries.”

The request, a part of a broad finances proposal for the 2024 fiscal 12 months, comes lower than two months after a pilot-alert system outage prompted the FAA to floor flights nationwide for the primary time since 9/11.

Airways and the Transportation Division have sparred over causes of flight disruptions, with some firm executives blaming a shortfall of air site visitors controllers. Airways final 12 months scaled again their progress plans to place extra slack of their schedules as they grappled with a scarcity of pilots and plane.

President Joe Biden’s request highlighted the rising variety of rocket launches by house firms as one of many strains on U.S. airspace. Final 12 months, the FAA managed airspace for a file 92 house missions – a complete that features rocket launches and spacecraft reentries, which it expects to prime in 2023.

A lot of these missions launched from Florida, a state which has seen increasingly industrial air site visitors as properly.

Biden can be in search of a $3 million enhance for shopper safety work on the Transportation Division, which is pushing airways to formalize insurance policies like making certain households can sit collectively with out paying a price in addition to immediate refunds when issues go fallacious.