FAA stops maintaining navigation beacons across the Midwest — pilots will need different tools to fly

The US aviation regulator is shutting down radio beacons that pilots have used for navigation since the 1950s, replacing them with GPS-based systems. The beacons are being decommissioned as part of a decade-long FAA plan to modernize how aircraft find their way.

For 70 years, pilots navigating cross-country relied on a network of ground-based radio transmitters called VORs to know where they were. The FAA is systematically turning these off and forcing the aviation system to depend on satellite navigation instead. This is a real infrastructure transition — the older system is being actively dismantled, not just supplemented. The practical effect is that pilots and airlines lose a backup navigation system that works even when GPS is jammed or unavailable, which matters for military operations and anyone flying in contested airspace.