With Congress preparing to consider FAA reauthorization legislation this session, a host of general aviation advocacy associations have sent letters to transportation leaders in the House of Representatives highlighting “real and longstanding concerns” about a concept being pushed by some airlines regarding air traffic control and funding.
Specifically, the organizations cited concerns over a proposal promoted by some big airlines for the creation of “a new governance and funding model for our nation’s aviation system, based on systems in other parts of the world.”
“The general aviation community has very real and long-standing concerns about foreign air traffic control models, which go well beyond the user fee issue,” the letter states. “These concerns are based on our operating experiences in foreign systems, as well as thoughtful analysis about what those systems might look like in the United States.”
The letter was signed by leaders of the Experimental Aircraft Association, Air Care Alliance, Aircraft Electronics Association, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Commemorative Air Force, General Aviation Manufacturers Association, Helicopter Association International, International Council of Air Shows, National Agricultural Aviation Association, National Association of State Aviation Officials, National Air Transportation Association, National Business Aviation Association, Recreational Aviation Foundation, Seaplane Pilots Association and Veterans Airlift Command.
The letter was sent to House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee Chair Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania), Ranking Member Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon), T&I Aviation Subcommittee Chair Frank LoBiondo (R-New Jersey) and Ranking Member Rick Larsen (D-Washington).
A PDF of the letter is available here.
It is long past time to completely reformulate both FAA and the ATS aspects of FAA as a separate ANSP. While FAA’s regulatory side must in parallel be completely disassembled and rebuilt from scratch. Third Class medicals, impossible airmen certification policies, screwed up drone policies, and massively over specified STC and SID processes are but the tip of the iceberg. In particular, ATS is exceedingly ineffective and horrendously expensive in terms of “Cost per unit separation service”, for both GA (including from drones to airlines to the military). This 60 year old entirely obsolete ATS system is going to eventually massively hurt GA substantially, especially from a cost perspective. Present ATS services are grossly inefficient, increasingly deny access to legitimate airspace users, and are vastly over-expensive to sustain. FAA needs to be entirely dis-assembled and re-built from first principles, ASAP, before it is too late. While the needed changes could theoretically could be done within the present FAA model, by replacing senior executives down to branch level at FAA, it isn’t going to happen. FAA has simply deteriorated even farther in the past 20 years. This is NOT just an airline issue. It matters to ALL airspace users from low end GA and sport and gliders to drones to F22s to medevac to air transport. Please learn the key issues facing GA before “ready-fire-aim” following the beltway lobby groups like NBAA, …and recognize that only by completely dis-assembling FAA now, and likely splitting out ATS as a separate ANSP, …AND properly reconstituting both AFS and AIR from the top down based on fundamental aviation, and management, and safety related principles will there be any hope of GA surviving into the future, as least as we now know it, or once knew it.