FAA must buy safety equipment for air traffic control towers
S. 3929 — Air Traffic Situational Awareness Enhancement Act · Filed by Tim Sheehy (R-MT) · 3 cosponsors · Introduced Feb 26, 2026 · Reported out
Your members of Congress
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What it does
The bill tells the FAA to buy and install safety tools at contract towers. One tool helps controllers see where planes are. The other is called STARS. The FAA must finish within one year. The FAA must also pay back airports that bought these tools first.
Who it affects
Contract towers get modern safety equipment. Airports that paid for equipment early get money back. Pilots and passengers benefit from better safety.
One thing to notice
The bill does not set a limit on how much the FAA can spend paying back airports. The bill does not set a limit on training costs.
From the analysis of the bill text, linked under Primary records below.
Where it stands
3 cosponsors: 2 Democrats, 1 Republicans.
- Feb 26, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Feb 26, 2026 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”
- Sep 16, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of…”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
4 groups reported lobbying about this bill. They filed 4 reports from Jun 2026 to Jun 2026.
Those reports show $2,092,100 in lobbying spending. Each report lists about 20 bills. So that money was not all for this bill.
More groups named this bill than 72% of bills with any report.
Tim Sheehy, who sponsored the bill, received $401,325 from PACs for the 2026 election.
- American Association of Airport Executives — $1,172,100 in 1 report
- Alaska Airlines Inc — $500,000 in 1 report
- Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association — $320,000 in 1 report
- Regional Airline Association — $100,000 in 1 report
Lobbying is legal. These reports show who lobbied about this bill, not what changed.
Words to know
- contract towers — Air traffic control towers run by private companies, not the FAA.
- STARS — A computer system that helps control towers manage air traffic safely.
- lobbying — Trying to influence lawmakers about a bill. Companies and groups pay people to do this.
- PACs — Groups that collect money and give it to candidates for office.
- sponsored — To sponsor a bill is to introduce it in Congress and put your name on it.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (3,396 characters) on Jul 9, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,928 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-11-03.
“FAA must buy safety equipment for air traffic control towers” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s3929/simple Report an error
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