Marylin Kausner lost her 24-year-old daughter Ellyce in 2009 when Continental Colgan Air Flight 3407 crashed in Clarence Center, killing 49 people on board and one on the ground.

The agency is under pressure to modernize outdated air traffic control systems that have contributed to a series of outages, near-misses and deadly accidents in recent months.

In the case of Flight 3222, the trouble apparently began when an air traffic controller in Houston cleared the pilot to make a visual approach, meaning the crew was relying on its judgment rather ...