**GAO-09-718R**                      Published: May 20, 2009. Publicly Released: May 20, 2009.                  

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## Highlights

This letter responds to a congressional request that we address questions submitted for the record related to the March 18, 2009, hearing entitled ATC Modernization: Near-Term Achievable Goals. Our attached responses to these questions are based on a review of literature on avionics and equipage incentives, interviews with Federal Aviation Administration officials, interviews with stakeholders and developers of avionics with knowledge of the maturity and costs of avionics equipment, and our knowledge of the areas addressed by the questions. We conducted this work from April 2009 to May 2009 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

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