In his most outspoken opposition to date about a Congressional plan for legislation that would create a privatized air traffic control (ATC) system funded by user fees, Ed Bolen, president of the National Business Aviation Association, sounded a call to action to oppose such a plan before a gathering of more than 3,000 attendees at the 2015 NBAA Regional Forum at Teterboro Airport (TEB) in New Jersey on June 25.
Bolen pointed to recent remarks by House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania), indicating his intent to introduce the legislation as part of the reauthorization of the FAA.
The FAA’s current authorization is set to expire Sept. 30, sparking debate by some in Washington around the merits of a potential FAA reauthorization bill that might include a privatized air traffic control system primarily funded through user fees.
“The FAA reauthorization legislation that has recently been discussed would be nearly identical to legislation that was put forth during reauthorization in 2006,” said Bolen. “If implemented, such a bill will pose an unequivocal threat to the future of business aviation in the United States.”
“The American business aviation community is unrivaled anywhere in the world,” Bolen continued. “It helps generate over $200 billion in economic impact, creates over 1 million jobs, and provides a lifeline to the American public in times of humanitarian crisis. If the kind of legislation that is being considered were to receive a majority vote in Congress, it would cause irreparable harm to general aviation and to those we serve.”
Acknowledging that changes are needed in order for the U.S. to remain the world leader in air transportation, Bolen noted that the NBAA is fully committed to the smooth and complete transition to a Next Generation air traffic management system (known as NextGen).
However, such a transition should not come with the creation of a privatized ATC structure that would be without oversight by elected officials, he declared.
“Our elected representatives respond to active engagement by constituents,” Bolen said. “If we want our voices to be heard on this issue, we must write letters, send emails, make phone calls, and show up to town halls lawmakers host in their home states and Congressional districts. If we, as a community do nothing, then we will get nothing.”
NBAA members and GA pilots are encouraged to use NBAA’s online Contact Congress resource to alert lawmakers to the industry’s concerns over privatizing ATC and funding it with user fees. NBAA also offers a Twitter-based advocacy tool that people with Twitter accounts can use in expressing their concerns to Congress.
While NBAA support for the “concept” of NextGen is well founded and appreciated, NextGen in its present form is heading toward a serious $40B failure. Not only is FAA seriously “broken” at this point, as evidenced by seriously flawed, overpriced, and delayed NextGen components, and inappropriate new pilot qualification rules, and a muffed UAV integration policy that will never work efficiently or effectively, and archaic and overspecified medical certification rules, but the very relationship between user needs and benefits, and costs, is severely broken.
At this point the breakup of FAA and splitting out of ATS in the form of an ANSP, with simultaneous complete reorganization of the remaining certification and flight standards functions of FAA is the least bad likely answer. Airspace users need to be much more directly influencing what the ANSP is doing for NextGen evolution conceptually, as well as for cost containment for ATS services, and overseeing FAA’s impractical and flawed equipage requirements, as well as reigning in FAA’s application of entirely inappropriate equipage criteria (e.g., faulty criteria like ADS-B, with ineffective UAT and ADS-R where all vehicles can’t see each other directly, and the massively overspecified NIC and NAC which is what is unnecessarily and impractically driving cost and complexity out of reach).
So hopefully NBAA will reconsider their position, and advocate for the airspace users having a more direct role in the USERS monitoring ATS services and evolution, and cost allocations, and regulatory criteria, and not having Congress have to foolishly step into technical arenas, and make illogical and counterproductive technical decisions that is not the purpose of Congress (like the recent seriously inappropriate ATPC criteria imposed intervention). Oversight of elected officials at a high level is certainly appropriate, but not at a detailed technical level. Further, at this point, FAA’s dysfunctional state itself is the biggest real threat to both ATS modernization and administering rational safety rules. This isn’t likely fixable with FAA in its present form. So splitting out of ATS services as a separate ANSP, while simultaneously reorganizing the rest of remaining FAA, and re-populating it with people who actually have significant aviation operational and technical experience, is likely the least bad solution for both the US aviation community, and the United States and its taxpayers in general.