FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said at a hearing that while he is grateful for the law Congress passed to end air traffic controller furloughs and stave off contract tower defunding, it “does not end the sequester. We will not enjoy the benefits or the stability that the FAA reauthorization provides until we find a sensible long-term solution.”
A blog post on the Helicopter Association International‘s website notes that Rick Larsen, the top Democrat on T&I’s Aviation panel, also said if a long-term, comprehensive solution to the sequester is not dealt with, “none of our colleagues should act surprised” when the effects are back in October.
I agree with everything said. We actually need tower closing because so many of them are all but useless and just create more delays for VFR traffic. The way it was done was ill thought-out. Where we need them at these small airfields is where there is a lot of training and slow VFR traffic has to compete for runways with turbine aircraft. If we are going to accept the idea that our government desperately needs to reduce spending then we shouldn’t whine about tower closings. Main problem of course is that the FAA regulates too many areas that they don’t need to and that just creates an ever increasing bureaucracy. Biggest example is the effort to eliminate the medical for piston powered aircraft. Another thing is that there are between 450 and 500 fatalities every year in GA aircraft. This pales into insignificance when compared to disease, auto accidents and even murders for some segments of society. Yet we have this huge bureaucracy of the FAA and NTSB that seems to think that aviation deaths are a huge problem for the general population. Yet, we as aviators, keep making the same mistakes year after year. I think we are at the point where no amount of preaching, nagging, education, etc. will do much to improve the situation. Humans make mistakes and no amount of government intervention will completely eliminate it or, I’m afraid, in our current aviation environment make a meaningful change in it. That’s just the way it is.
News Flash for the Administrator: Sequestration is the most sensible thing to come out of Washington in a long time. The administration accidentally came up with a good idea on that one.
Blah, Blah, blah….
You know what? Close the dag-gum towers. Close the FSDOs and the Huerta’s PR talking heads too. I would be nice to exist for a single week without the FAA and GAMA and NBAA whining about the small cuts in the amout of money we BORROW from the Chinese to run our little game here. Geesh. Man -up and adjust just like everybody in the middle class has had to for the past fifteen years.
Dirty little secret, the DOT has been stealing from the ADAP fund for years. So called borrow and never repay. Everyone ignores breaking the law. There is money there trust me not the politicians. Thanks LBJ for creating the DOT and putting the FAA under it. Just like his great society a colosale failure. No wonder he choose not to run for reelection. He was a buffon in every sense of the word and would sell his mother for a vote.
Wow. Dude… you are still mad at LBJ?
Why not? I sure as hell am. It was under LBJ’s administration with its “Great Society” baloney that it became, for the first time, possible to live your entire life on “free” money from the Government without working for any of it. Well, guess what? Too many people have discovered that little secret, and we are very close to, or may already have passed, the tipping point. Too many people riding in the boat, not enough rowing it. And no one seems capable of making the hard decisions that would put the U.S. back on track. Everyone gets the same vote, contributing or not, and the ones who aren’t contributing have become too large a block to overcome. I know this would never fly [this is, after all, an aviation forum-sorry!], but my idea is this: If you aren’t working or of retirement age, you don’t vote. On any form of public [state or federal] assistance? You don’t vote until you’re contributing to society again. There is no “Constitutionally guaranteed” right to vote. It’s not in the Bill of Rights. Just my idea. I know it’ll never work in these days of non-citizens and dead people voting, some several times per election!
Can’t do that. No Democrat would ever get elec… wait a minute.
Then again… Republicans, left unchallenged, wouldn’t be any better than the Democrats. Heck, they ain’t much better now. Some of ’em are even worse. (Can you say ‘Bloomberg’?)
Well said; I could not agree more.