By a nearly two-to-one margin, voters oppose privatizing the operations of the air traffic control system by taking it from the FAA and turning it over to a private non-profit entity, according to a new poll.
A recent telephone survey conducted by Global Strategy Group of 801 registered voters nationwide between Aug. 8 and Aug. 12 found that:
- A majority (55%) oppose privatizing the ATC functions of the FAA “by taking it from the FAA and turning it over to a non-profit corporation,” while 29% support it. Opposition exceeds support across party lines (it is opposed by 62% of Democrats and 58% of independents, while among Republicans, 46% oppose it and 38% support it). Opposition is higher than support across other demographic sub-groups, including gender, age, education and region of the country. There is also essentially no difference among those who fly often (56% oppose), those who fly about once a year (55%) and those who rarely or never fly (55%).
- Generally, voters support privatizing government functions or services. When asked whether they support or oppose “privatizing government functions or services, which is defined as allowing private companies to provide services currently or traditionally done by government,” 51% support privatization generally, while only 34% oppose it. Pollsters note that this question was asked immediately ahead of the question on privatizing the ATC functions of the FAA, which means that 20% of voters said they supported privatization generally and then immediately said they opposed privatizing the FAA’s ATC functions.
- Opposition to privatization may be at least partly due to the fact that voters think the FAA does a good job managing the ATC system. Fully 67% of voters give the FAA a positive job rating overall, while only 16% say it does a not so good or poor job. When asked more specifically to rate the job the FAA does operating the nation’s air traffic control system, 80% of voters say the FAA does an excellent or good job and only 14% rate the FAA negatively.
“Voters are very clearly expressing an “if-it-ain’t-broke” attitude about the FAA and privatization, officials with the polling company concluded.
A private entity will run the NAS for profit. Since the airlines have very large budgets and we have very small ones, I think it unlikely that a profit-seeking entity will serve the GA constituency any better than the current bureaucracy. The outcome is too much in question and the downside too great for privatization to be an attractive option.
Mr. Vancina, NOT SO, …it is not true that a “split out” ANSP from FAA would necessarily be “for profit”. In fact, the most serious discussions, and models suggested to date for the US, would be either as a NON-PROFIT, or as a quasi-governmental organization, but with serious USER input and oversight.
If it turned out as lousy as FSS who wants it?
The poll asserting that “FAA is just fine” all wrong. That’s because it isn’t telling the fundamental truth about the true costs of the present ATC or regulatory system, and the viable long term practical alternatives, and the costs of each of those alternatives to the poll subjects. The poll incorrectly makes it sound like “do you want to continue to get essentially more free stuff”, or do you want to “pay for stuff”, …when that false choice is completely wrong. Even some of the aviation associations are starting to understand the folly of FAA’s NextGen, with aspects like its $4B waste of money for WAAS, maintaining dozens of unnecessary FSSs, and dysfunctional overblown avionics requirements like for the horrendously expensive ADS-B that will never effectively work, and the skyrocketing cost of GA ops partly due to obsolete foolish FAA criteria (think about the 3rd class medical mess, the STC mess, glider ANPRM mess, and UAV criteria mess), …and then say GA pilots still think FAA “is doing a good job”. If the truth were told in GA, about how outrageously unnecessarily expensive and inefficient present GA ops are getting, in large part due to terrible FAA criteria, and how outrageously and unnecessarily expensive and inefficient ATC presently is, to the entire country as well as other airspace users, and how much it actually now totally costs per unit separation service, and how much it really costs even for each VFR flight, let alone for an IFR flight, no one in low end GA would ever be able to afford to fly any more. Hence this poll’s premise and result is completely bogus. It implicitly and falsely comparing splitting out an ANSP and fixing FAA,… with the false alternative of just getting the traditional “more free stuff”, which is an entirely outdated and uneconomic model, that is based on extremely high and unnecessary true costs, for an obsolete and inefficient ATC system. Worst of all for GA, present fuel taxes nowhere near cover the true “fully allocated” overall FAA and system costs. This flawed model cannot and will not be sustained without a very high public subsidy, which simply isn’t going to happen any more. So it is time for GA to wake up and finally be effectively represented at the table, for how, and why, the FAA is going to be fixed, including potentially even broken up,with a modernized ANSP split out, and in the process completely re-baseline the failing overblown and completely ineffective plan for NextGen, ….or GA will instead become dinner at the table.
Dear ManyDecadesGA,
I have a major fundamental problem with your statement and don’t agree 100 percent with you.
First, you choose not to give your name so it is very difficult for me to really understand that you are a real person or just someone who wants to stir up controversy by being somewhat anonymous. I firmly believe you if you post something then be adult enough to sign your name to it and not hide.
Also, if you are afraid of retaliation there are already many protections in place against this sort of thing. Enough said on this subject. You know my feelings and opinion.
Second, If you think privatization will work better then just look at AMTRAK and other countries. It doesn’t work. Look at Australia, Twenty plus years ago they had a thriving GA population. Then after imposing landing fees and other structural constraints their movements went down by half the following year and haven’t come back. Many people just stopped flying privately. Look at Europe, same type of stuff. Look at all the foreign students who come over here to learn to fly. The proof is in the pudding.
Privatization is so bogged down in needless policies, procedures and levels of management nothing of substance ever gets done until their is an accident causing lives. No one has any responsibility or culpability. Yet many accidents could have been prevented. Yes, there is usually no one cause of an accident but a chain of events that someone usually interprets differently than the norm and something happens. And why, because someone chooses to something different. Whether it be from the regulatory side or the private sector.
If you read my previous statement you will see that I firmly believe the upper levels of management don’t really care to make things better because it is job security. Many of the people have devoted careers to get that gov’t pension and don’t want to rock the boat. Another reason why many upper management types don’t want to rock the boat is because they haven’t done the exact same job in 10-20 years. They have lost touch of what it is really like to work in the trenches day in day out. The night shifts, holidays, weekends. Take for example Law Enforcement. Very few supervisors go out on calls and handle situations. Why because they are not doing team work. They are hiding behind the façade of it’s not my responsibility. I say Hog Wash. I see Firefighters supervisors get up with the rest of crew, don their equipment, jump on the truck in the middle of the night and fight fires like everyone else. They don’t stand back or report from their desk in the morning after breakfast. ATC is a team effort and if the supervisors/managers/directors aren’t doing the front line job they shouldn’t be there. Privatization will create such as huge and unnecessary bureaucracy it will make the FAA look like child’s play.
Sir, you also talk about the true amount of money the FAA wastes. Well, you can also look at the presidential security detail. There is the secret service, the military and all the other agencies and gov’t services used especially when the president travels.
Yes the FAA has come up with many screw brained ideas. I remember the Microwave Landing System (MLS) and the money thrown into that boondoggle. Then there was going to be only two ATC centers for the entire country. 911 took care of that idea. FSS terminals at every airport. Then we were going to have free downloads of charts and approach procedures. Just plug your device into the data base and you are updated. All the information is already paid for by the taxpayers because the military needs the information. Where did that go ? Why are we being double charged for information when commercial companies like Boeing who owns Jeppesen get the information and data for free yet the private individual can’t.
The point I’m trying to make is yes the FAA has wasted billions of dollars. But, there is still a somewhat transparent system where the average person can see where the money has gone and question it. Then if enough interest has taken place Congress begins to take steps and starts asking questions about what has is going on. Every once in awhile peoples heads roll and they are fired. With privatization I just don’t see it happening. Example, who runs AMTRAK ? But I do know who runs the FAA and for how long. I also know who runs the NTSB and there term limits. Again, Privatization is a bad idea.
Again, Please post your name.
Respectfully,
Jeff Aryan
Mr. Aryan, the key issue is fixing a seriously dysfunctional FAA, severly obslete and flawed criteria, and modernizing a failing overly expensive ATC system that is increasingly freezing out GA users, and is entirely unaffordable for GA if true “fully allocated” costs are considered. Worst of all, NextGen as it is presently being touted and configured by FAA IS NOT THE ANSWER, and will NOT WORK. I only advocate reorganizing FAA and splitting out an ANSP because only that option has any reasonably hope of being successful, just like after the Grand Canyon accident, in the last effort decades ago, to fundamentally reform CAA into FAA, and lay the foundation that led to the present ATC system. “Tweaking” or fine tuning FAA with minor changes at this point, will no longer work. FAA is just much too broken. Even exceedingly talented outsiders brought into FAA recently (e.g., Russ C) couldn’t do it alone, even when they were senior executives at the top.
And yes Mr. Aryan, I’m a real person, who has been both on the inside, and outside, and flying for many decades. I now fear for GA’s future (and for the rest of aviation too), if the present FAA led seriously faulty path forward is followed any longer, for either sustaining or implementing more inappropriate and counterproductive criteria, or for fielding an excessively expensive and completely unaffordable, as well as inadequate and ineffective, obsolete NextGen system of Air Traffic separation services.
..and Mr. Aryan, I’m sorry for the few typos left uncorrected above! Hopefully the GA news editor will correct them!!!
Dear ManyDecadesGA,
You still haven’t posted your name. This gives me doubt about your true intentions.
But, I understand and respect your comments and don’t fully agree with them.
Lets be realistic, General Aviation will always take a back seat to the airlines mainly because of the money issue and not looking out for the public interest. This may not be right or correct but it is reality.
Respectfully,
Jeff Aryan
Mr. Aryan, my true intentions are very simple.
It is critical we preserve robust survival of the full spectrum of GA as we know it. In parallel we obviously need to sustain the ability for air transport to efficiently and economically serve the nation’s passenger and cargo requirements, and assure the ability of our armed forces to have practical access to all the airspace they need to maintain our global security. We also need to assure continued safe and efficient access to airspace that other special mission users have, from EMS to particular segments of BizAv to fire fighting, to the full range of sport activities from LSAs to gliders to parachutists. Sadly, NextGen WILL NEVER be able to do that, at any reasonable or affordable cost, as it is presently erroneously being configured by FAA.
Nonetheless, I do agree with you that the issues we face could theoretically be fixed with either ANSP model, with an ANSP within FAA, or external to FAA. However, after nearly three decades of trying, experience has shown that the fundamental structural problems FAA now faces, that led to their failing NextGen and recent awful and counterproductive faux safety and avionics criteria, cannot be practically fixed by any known political process. So our only practical choice now, with any reasonable hope of success, is to break up FAA, and start over with a new and separate ANSP, largely as we did after the fateful Grand Canyon accident on Saturday, June 30, 1956, at 10:30 am Pacific Standard Time,… when a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 fatally struck a Trans World Airlines Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation over the Grand Canyon. We’ve just recently had an F-16 whack a C150 with the best efforts of both pilots, as well as a Sabreliner fatally whack a C172. How many more of these do we need, especially with UAVs now in the mix too, before we take action to finally fix this obsolete ATC system in a way we can still all afford to fly. FAA isn’t doing it, and in fact is likely incapable of ever doing it, in their present form, with their present staff and constraints.
They’re not talking about privatizing the FAA there, Tiger. At least 75%of what you’ve written is completely irrelevant to the subject at hand.
Again, Privatization of the ATC and/or FAA is a very bad idea. It is not efficient and a waste of time and money.
Mr. Schuster, Congress will lose control over the agency just like AMTRAK. There will be no one to hold their feet to the fire when things go wrong. More monies will be wasted just thru the added bureaucracy. Also don’t forget about the additional time factor of everything.
Their really are some people within the FAA and ATC system who really try to do the right thing but as with all organizations there are politics. If your idea of privatization happens then a completely new set of politics will rule and nothing will ever get done or done correctly.
I know, I have worked for a very large organization for over 32 years and many of the higher ups play the game so they can maintain their position because they enjoy manipulating things. They are not looking for solutions. It’s called “Job Security”, and WHY: Because they can. Plain and simple.
ATC Privatization is a wrong and a very bad idea in this instance.
Sir (Mr. Aryan), I fear your are neglecting a key point. Reorganizing FAA and splitting out ATS, and making both much more directly accountable to actual airspace users, and to true costs, so as to have users have a more substantial influence on the evolution of rules as well as air traffic system evolution, is by far the best present hope to help save GA (as well as to save the efficiency, access, economics, and safety of the rest of aviation too). Trying to fix either the presently massively broken FAA, or the obsolete US ATC system has failed miserably, and is now virtually hopeless, at least in FAA’s current form. This is because FAA is now more (structurally) driven by other (inappropriate) forces, than by true airspace user needs, operational requirements, true safety, or real and “fully allocated” costs to users.
Better tell your Congressman and Senators because “your” aviation associations, namely AOPA and EAA, are trying to keep efforts to privatize ATC quiet. They offer the lame excuse that they are ‘waiting until the proposal is formalized”,(by representative Schuster), until they let you know about it.
In fact Schuster was attempting to get this voted on as part of the FAA reauthorization bill by September 30th of this year (2015). AOPA and EAA planned to say and publicize nothing until it was voted into law. Luckily, the House leadership couldn’t get their act together, and it appears it will not be possible to sneak user fees into the House calendar this year.