SquawkHijack
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Here’s the first article I’ve seen on privatization, the agenda to make this happen is becoming more clear. Anyone else seen anything similar?
EDIT: there is a paywall in the article linked at bottom, but I’ll copy/paste the most in depth part of it.
“Air-traffic control is a 24/7 high-tech operation trapped inside a regulatory agency,” Dorothy Robyn writes. The Federal Aviation Administration is bound by stultifying federal rules and sees Congress, not the public, as its customer. The Real Problem With the FAA
Following January’s deadly midair collision over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in which air-traffic control may have been a factor, and amid an ongoing crisis at Newark Liberty International Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called for investing tens of billions of dollars to build a “brand new air traffic control system” over the next three years.
“Throwing money at the problem has some merit, given the dire condition of the ATC system,” Robyn writes. But the Trump administration’s “proposal is flawed in a host of ways, the most egregious of which is that it preserves the current ATC-governance structure. Blue-ribbon commissions and independent experts have long argued that this structure is the underlying source of our nation’s ATC problems.”
“Air-traffic control is not inherently a governmental function,” Robyn continues. “Precisely because of the operational nature of air-traffic control, in fact, the federal government is poorly suited to run the system.” Budget rules, for instance, slow the pace of technological deployment; new ATC systems might be obsolete by the time they are fully fielded. The FAA also suffers from political interference—for instance, maintaining costly legacy systems in part to accommodate powerful users whose aircraft are not equipped to operate updated technology. And the FAA both operates and regulates the air-traffic-control system, creating “a clear conflict of interest.”
Attempts to corporatize air-traffic control have failed, “primarily because of pushback from private pilots and corporate-jet owners, who pay almost nothing to use the ATC system,” Robyn writes. In 2018, a House bill preserved the fee structure that shifts $1 billion or more a year in costs from one-percenters in their $65 million Gulfstreams to the crowded passengers in coach.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has moved in a very different direction, Robyn continues.
www.theatlantic.com
EDIT: there is a paywall in the article linked at bottom, but I’ll copy/paste the most in depth part of it.
“Air-traffic control is a 24/7 high-tech operation trapped inside a regulatory agency,” Dorothy Robyn writes. The Federal Aviation Administration is bound by stultifying federal rules and sees Congress, not the public, as its customer. The Real Problem With the FAA
Following January’s deadly midair collision over Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, in which air-traffic control may have been a factor, and amid an ongoing crisis at Newark Liberty International Airport, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called for investing tens of billions of dollars to build a “brand new air traffic control system” over the next three years.
“Throwing money at the problem has some merit, given the dire condition of the ATC system,” Robyn writes. But the Trump administration’s “proposal is flawed in a host of ways, the most egregious of which is that it preserves the current ATC-governance structure. Blue-ribbon commissions and independent experts have long argued that this structure is the underlying source of our nation’s ATC problems.”
“Air-traffic control is not inherently a governmental function,” Robyn continues. “Precisely because of the operational nature of air-traffic control, in fact, the federal government is poorly suited to run the system.” Budget rules, for instance, slow the pace of technological deployment; new ATC systems might be obsolete by the time they are fully fielded. The FAA also suffers from political interference—for instance, maintaining costly legacy systems in part to accommodate powerful users whose aircraft are not equipped to operate updated technology. And the FAA both operates and regulates the air-traffic-control system, creating “a clear conflict of interest.”
Attempts to corporatize air-traffic control have failed, “primarily because of pushback from private pilots and corporate-jet owners, who pay almost nothing to use the ATC system,” Robyn writes. In 2018, a House bill preserved the fee structure that shifts $1 billion or more a year in costs from one-percenters in their $65 million Gulfstreams to the crowded passengers in coach.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has moved in a very different direction, Robyn continues.
The Real Problem With the FAA
There’s a fundamental flaw in the way the United States guides airplanes around the country.
