A controversial ATC privatization plan has been removed from an FAA reauthorization bill in the House of Representatives, scoring a victory for general aviation against a powerful, well-financed lobby that sought to give control of the national air traffic system to the country’s largest airlines.
Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania) announced Feb. 27, 2018, that he is removing ATC privatization from H.R. 2997 and moving toward an FAA reauthorization bill that can pass both houses in Congress.
Shuster, who is retiring after this year’s election, had attempted to garner enough votes to bring the privatization plan to the full House on several occasions over the past year.
“This is a tribute to all of you in general aviation who took the time to make yourself heard,” said Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) CEO/Chairman Jack J. Pelton. “Thanks to the unified fight by the GA community, this bill was not going to pass with ATC privatization as part of it. We can now move ahead with what we have maintained all along — modernization, not privatization. We can fund the FAA long-term and let the agency continue with its already progressing modernization efforts.
“I want to thank every one of the grassroots aviators who took time to call, write, and visit their congressional representatives, and express the far-reaching negative impacts that ATC privatization would have on the world’s busiest, most complex, and safest air traffic system,” he continued.
EAA was among the groups who warned of the privatization threat, a coalition that grew to include more than 200 aviation associations, plus consumer advocates, mayors from throughout the country, and even some conservative groups. The government’s own nonpartisan review agencies also panned the ATC privatization concept, noting it would add nearly $100 billion to the federal deficit, slow modernization of the air traffic system, and threaten national security.
“This was, as we’ve said all along, a bad solution to a nonexistent problem,” Pelton said. “Now let us join together to do the real work on behalf of aviation. We seek congressional passage of a bill that will maintain equal access to skies and eliminates the threat of user fees, aviation event fees, and other burdens that inhibit the future of general aviation.”
“The voice of the entire general aviation community was heard today,” added Matt Zuccaro, president and CEO of Helicopter Association International. “I want to thank our members for their commitment and passion to engage their elected officials. I also want to express our community’s gratitude to our representatives for listening. This is a great example of what can happen when people unite and speak with one voice. I offer my deepest appreciation to the entire GA community for its tireless work defending our industry.”
“This is what advocacy is all about,” added Mark Baker, president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. “AOPA and other groups identified the threat this bill posed for GA and with great support from AOPA members, we worked every angle on Capitol Hill, through the media, and with other organizations outside of aviation who would also be negatively impacted. The coalition and excellent strategy paid off and kept this bill from reaching the House floor.
“Now we can focus that energy on continuing to improve the excellent air traffic system we already have and in bringing other improvements to the FAA,” he continued. “Meanwhile, we will remain ever vigilant for future efforts that will be disruptive to general aviation because the general aviation we enjoy in this country is unique in the world and is worth protecting.”
“We are profoundly grateful for everyone who has made their voice heard on this critical issue, including the National Business Aviation Association‘s members and the entire general aviation community, as well as a chorus of opposition from a diverse, informed and united coalition,” echoed NBAA officials. “The many members of Congress who carefully considered this issue, listened to concerns from their constituents, and ultimately stood with the general aviation community should also be applauded.
“The general aviation community came together like never before, and clearly told Congress that handing over our nation’s ATC system to an airline-dominated board is a risk we simply cannot take – everyone should be proud of this significant effort,” NBAA officials continued.
“As we all know, long-term reauthorization of the FAA, and the continuing modernization of the nation’s aviation system, is a national priority, one we all share. We are profoundly grateful that Chairman Shuster has responded to the concerns that have been raised over his proposal, by a large and diverse group of organizations and individuals.
“We look forward to working with the chairman and other congressional transportation leaders on both sides of Capitol Hill, on a bipartisan basis, to advance a long-term FAA reauthorization package that serves all Americans, and ensures the U.S. has the world’s best air transportation system for decades to come. Now is the time to focus our full attention on a long-term FAA bill that continues advancing the modernization efforts that are already improving our ATC system.”
The “problem” isn’t really user fees. The problem is accountability.
Private ATC would have been run by the airlines (remember, money talks – a single new 787 costs more than the entire, combined worldwide fleet of Cessna 150s), and the airlines would quickly figure out how to run the system for THEIR primary benefit, not for ours. They’d have the money, the lawyers, and the majority of the seats on the board. We’d have our bug-smashers and puddle-jumpers. Who will win that one?
Consider the experiences you have already had with large, unaccountable private businesses. Can you imagine if Comcast operated ATC? Or Equifax? Or Enron? Or AT&T, as in “We’re the phone company, we don’t have to care.” Private companies can go out of business, their employees can strike (now everybody take the bus until the strike is over), and they can be sued right, left and center – and of course the staggering insurance costs to protect the private company will be passed on to us. How do YOU feel about covering some private company’s liability because their inexperience and/or incompetence caused an airliner crash? Of course, they could always pull the same move as your friendly local bank and say “Use of our ATC system means you have to go to binding arbitration, you can’t sue us.” As if we have a choice of ATC systems . . . we’d have to sign away our rights under the law to use ATC.
Then of course, the private ATC system would be constantly looking for more revenue. “Well lets sell our user’s information to advertisers!” After all, we are excellent potential customers, not a lot of airplane owners are on food stamps, so it is worth their while to annoy us with constant ads for crap we aren’t interested in. No thanks.
Yes, the FAA has problems, it can be sclerotic, opaque, obtuse and stubborn, HOWEVER, we the people have congressmen and senators to complain to, so the FAA is ultimately answerable to SOMEBODY. Private ATC is answerable only to itself, and will act it its own best interests. Every time.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, what we have works, we can sharpen it up and make it work better. Government is slow, but eventually accountable. Privatization will quickly move to cover their own behinds, and they’ll answer to nobody.
Best Regards,
Miami Mike
You’re damned right that user fees aren’t the problem and that accountability is. And how successful have “we” been at keeping the FAA accountable – for anything??! Light Aircraft General Aviation (LAGA) is dying due to the FAA’s complete failure to keep up with the times, and yet AOPA and all the other letter combinations just got suckered into providing the FAA with a ringing endorsement for creating the “best and safest ATC system in the world”.
We already know the democrats won’t listen when we plead for less regulation – they know how their bread is buttered. Would you kindly explain to me how you’re now going to get the republicans to listen when we resume complaining about how LAGA is getting killed by the FAA??? AOPA and others just told the republicans that the FAA is so fantastic it should be funded first no matter what. This was an epic blunder and you can now kiss meaningful regulatory reform goodbye.
You’re concerned about the airlines “winning”? They already are – because they are paying for the system. Believe me, you do NOT want to start comparing the funding contributions from LAGA to the funding contributions from the airlines. And, you do NOT want to start comparing the useful seat-miles produced by LAGA to the useful seat miles produced by the airlines. Let us be a little cognizant of our true place in the universe here. We are a declining group of ageing constituents and our influence is declining fast. Now would have been a great time to negotiate getting regulatory relief and freedom from future user fees for LAGA in return for our support for a stand-alone ATC. That opportunity was completely wasted and it likely won’t return.
I will respectfully brush your arguments against private companies aside as “babble”. You probably do not know this, but every day when you turn the lights on in your home chances are that the services on the other side of the light switch are provided by a private company – also known as an “investor-owned utility”. Do such companies perform as efficiently as other private companies who are exposed to hard-core competition? No, of course not, but they still perform waaayyyy better than “municipal utilities” or “public utilities”. Why? Because while they are heavily regulated like an “ATC utility” would be, they are not encumbered by the same level of bureaucratic stupidity as a governmental entity like the FAA. And, btw, should we maybe compare Comcast’s technological progress over the past 20 years with that of the FAA?
I wish you all kinds of luck if you think you can “sharpen it up and make it work better” in regard to the FAA – history has made it clear you can’t. Telling Congress and the President that the FAA is doing a fantastic job was an epic blunder and you can now kiss meaningful regulatory reform goodbye.
We need to parse this out a bit.
ATC is under the FAA, moving it to privatization wouldn’t change the rest of the FAA. They’d still cover everything else you (and many of us) are unhappy about.
We have made some progress with the FAA – Basic Med is a big one, adopting new tech for certificated aircraft is happening, you can now put a Garmin G5 into a lot of steam gauge equipped aircraft, and we now have a very healthy LSA category with lots of quite interesting, technically advanced aircraft. The FAA isn’t at fault for a Cessna 172 costing $250K, it is the fault of inflation, low production numbers (thus no economies of scale) and the certification expenses were paid long, long ago.
General aviation aircraft manufacturers want to build expensive airplanes because, quite simply, that’s where the money is and that’s where the customers are. You and I might buy two or three airplanes in our lives, perhaps $200,000 to $300,000 – maybe – but some middle eastern airline just bought 60 or 70 A380s with options for more . . . we are not and will never be in that league. Inexpensive airplanes for everybody simply don’t exist, and this is not the fault of the FAA.
My objection to privatization is based on the creation of an inescapable monopoly answering to no one, and to the giveaway of billions of dollars of government assets (which WE paid for) to a private company which swears, cross my heart and hope to die, they will do a sterling job, the transition will be seamless, they are going treat everyone well, and reduce costs in the bargain. Rainbows and unicorns all around.
Comparing the technological advances of Comcast in the past twenty years to the technological advances of the FAA is a false equivalence. First, Comcast has managed to get the award for most hated company in the US multiple times – and they didn’t get it by taking good care of their customers. Second, nobody dies if they miss an episode of Game of Thrones. Somebody could very well die if the new, private ATC company screws up, or if FAA oversight of aircraft is rolled back because “their level of safety is too expensive.”
Yes, Next-Gen has been delayed forever and costs multiple times what it was going to. You should be aware that something like 40% of all major software projects FAIL, never get completed, never work properly, and the FAA isn’t immune to this (nor is Comcast, nor would the new private ATC be).
I agree that government agencies often do a less than stellar job of things, but if you want an example of privatization of transportation gone really sour, look at Amtrak – from a safe distance. We subsidize them to the tune of several billion dollars a year, every year they offer less and less service at higher and higher prices, and have more and more accidents.
What was driving the proposed privatizing of ATC was POLITICS and POSTURING, not the needs of the flying public (which includes us as well as the airlines), and certainly not aviation safety. ATC in this country is like Churchill’s definition of democracy – “The worst of all forms of government – except for all the others.” (If you think the FAA is bad, try dealing with EASA in Europe.)
With best regards,
Miami Mike
Mike,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. We certainly have some areas of agreement and you very effectively made my point when you said, “we now have a very healthy LSA category with lots of quite interesting, technically advanced aircraft.”
Exactly! Progress happens when we get the FAA out of the way!
The obvious LSA evolution would be a “Private Sport Aircraft” (PSA) category limited to 200 hp, 2,640 lbs, constant speed prop, 150 knots, and 4 seats. And once that had proven itself the next evolution would be a “Sport Utility Aircraft (SUA) category limited to 300 hp, 3,500 lbs, 200 knots and 6 seats.
But good luck getting the FAA to agree to any of these dream figures anytime soon (like ever) now that AOPA and others have told Congress and the President that the FAA is doing a fantastic job. And it really does not matter that the proposed ATC legislation may have been to some extent based on politics and posturing – it was still an opportunity for making fundamental changes to the way the FAA operates.
But the FAA won a major battle here and it will now have lost any incentive to change. Unfortunately, AOPA’s members will turn out to be the biggest losers of this battle because we desperately need the FAA to radically change before it is too late.
I am not in favor privatizing ATC. Even if we did privatize it, the FAA would still exist as the regulatory agency. So why create another bureaucracy ? It’s a fallacy so say “privatize” anyway. It would still be a quasi government entity subject to regulation by the FAA and congress. It would dilute accountability, by having more entities, making it harder to pin point responsibility. We made that mistake 50 years ago in creating DOT, which is another layer of bureaucracy on top of the FAA. What is actually needed is responsible and common sense congressional oversight of the FAA. A possible form of oversight would be to have not only the FAA empowered to vote on new regulations, but have voting representatives from GA, Airlines, and Manufacturers also at the table. But this would still be an FAA process, just with external representatives at the table with some degree of voting power.
Yeah, Mark – that was some victory, wasn’t it??! As a result of your “victory” we get to keep the status quo with a hopelessly bloated and outdated regulatory agency, which is killing General Aviation. And, if it is up to you it will be permanently funded and will lose any incentive to change.
General Aviation’s fundamental problem is the FAA’s over-regulation, which adds cost and bureaucracy and ensures the continued use of technology, which our grandparents may recognize, but our kids won’t. Accordingly, don’t expect young folks to get excited about flying a (for them) un-affordable 2017 Cessna – which is more-or-less identical to a 1957 Cessna.
Under the FAA’s “leadership” light-aircraft GA in this country has gone from “thriving” to “on-life-support and dying”. Some of the worst junk flying around in today’s airplanes is “Certified” or “FAA-Approved” and the current regulatory structure simply assures that we will continue to have FAA bureaucrats writing more rules simply to ensure their own continued employment. At this time they are merely tinkering with ways to change the bureaucratic approval process for the next version of the half-million-dollar flying equivalent of the 56-Chevy. The mere existence of this flying equivalent is solid proof that the FAA’s ridiculous process has completely failed. Accordingly, the only way to fast-forward through 60 lost years of small-aircraft development is to get the FAA completely out of the regulatory business for light aircraft.
There is absolutely no good reason why private, light aircraft could not be treated exactly the same way the Department of Transportation treats private cars and the Coast Guard treats private boats. The National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act (originally enacted in 1966 and now recodified as 49 U.S.C. Chapter 301) gives the DOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) the authority to issue vehicle safety standards and to require manufacturers to recall vehicles that have safety-related defects or do not meet Federal safety standards.
In most states a (rich) 16-year-old kid can buy a street-legal 840-horsepower Dodge Challenger SRT Demon which is produced and sold that way without any lengthy and costly FAA-certification process. Are you really going to tell me that a hypothetical, non-FAA-approved 180-horsepower puddle jumper would be more dangerous to the public than this Demon?? Similarly, in many states 85-year-old great-grandpa Bob can legally drive his 500 horsepower, 50,000-pound mega-motorhome pulling a 20,000-pound toy-trailer one a regular driver’s license – and in some states he will even get to enjoy the same 80 mph speed limit on the Interstate as passenger cars – and without any kind of medical certificate!
If you own a 10-million-dollar jet the FAA’s regulatory approach probably makes perfect sense to you, and Mark Baker’s AOPA is obviously then your organization. But if all you can afford is a 50 year old, 50-thousand-dollar puddle jumper you (like countless others) will eventually throw in the towel to the great relief of your family. That old relic will continue to lose relevance and utility while demanding an ever larger share of your budget to keep it flying. And all the FAA’s paperwork won’t make it any safer – it will just make it much more expensive.
There are plenty of small-aircraft experts out there who could be part of an ongoing effort to write a set of adequate standards that would apply to various classes of Part-91-only aircraft, which could then be manufactured, sold and flown without further involvement of the FAA or any other activity-killing bureaucracy. And with the access to modern components, methods, and materials it could be done at a fraction of the cost of the currently available “new” airplanes – mostly designed more than half a century ago.
The only realistic way to get the FAA out of the way is to dismantle the FAA – by parting out its responsibilities. Taking ATC away from the FAA would have been a great start, but unfortunately AOPA and others made sure to throw that rare opportunity away.
Thanks to Mark Baker’s “victory” we now get to keep the FAA in its present form. It may save us a few user fees, but those user fees would have been peanuts compared to the thousands of dollars we each get to spend every year to comply with nonsensical FAA rules.
Thanks, Mark for your “visionary” thinking.
Well said Peter