"Air traffic control shouldn’t be a government responsibility"

[caraher]

So says a Washington Post opinion piece:

Privatization has had strong bipartisan backing for more than two decades. Already, some control towers at smaller airports use private-sector operators. The result has been lower costs without compromising safety. Unfortunately, these contract towers are still funded through the FAA and thus are subject to budget cuts from the sequester. Until a true separation of functions is achieved, partisan budget battles can affect travelers.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations made attempts at privatization, but they were held up by political concerns, including union opposition and that slow-moving bureaucracy. Given public frustration at the ongoing flight delays, the unions might prefer privatization to the current mess. On a broader level, the United States cannot afford to fall further behind in its transportation infrastructure. Just ask the overworked air-traffic controllers who are using outdated technology to oversee thousands of flights a day.

Critics of privatization say that safety would be compromised and that in some places, the number of safety incidents has increased since privatization. But there is disagreement about the validity of these claims. Numerous factors, such as an increase in air traffic, can play a role in safety incidents — and it is hard to imagine that simply being a federal employee makes a qualified air-traffic controller work better.

Edited to add author information on original piece:

Joshua L. Schank, an urban planner, is president and chief executive of the nonprofit Eno Center for Transportation, which seeks to improve transportation policy. From 2007 to 2011, he directed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Transportation Policy Project.

Hmmm... on whose backs did they achieve these lower costs? And is it really hard to imagine a for-profit air traffic control system eventually succumbing to pressures to overwork controllers, particularly if they can bust unions?

I honestly don't know much about how this business works, but it seems all too convenient to use the furlough situation to transform yet another service into a profit center...

[Downwinder]

1. Shall we privatize traffic signals, too?

[MurrayDelph]

11. Wasn't that done

when they privatized stop light camera enforcement?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. The private ATC towers are all at smaller airports

that don't have a huge amount of traffic. While it's true that the controllers at those facilities have to follow the same rules and procedures as the controllers at FAA towers, they are not handling the kind of traffic that is present every day at airports like ORD, JFK, ATL, etc. Also, as far as I know the private controllers are only at towers (local controllers), and do not handle TRACON (approach and departure) traffic or ARTCC (en route) traffic.

Where a function is entirely related to safety, it's a bad idea to turn it over to a for-profit enterprise. The only en route midair collision occurred while the two airplanes were being controlled by a for-profit Swiss ATC facility, Skyguide. One of the causes of the accident was the staffing of the facility by a single controller while some of the equipment was undergoing maintenance and was inoperative (which was unknown to the controller).

Only one air traffic controller, Peter Nielsen of ACC Zurich, was controlling the airspace through which the aircraft were transitioning. The other controller on duty was resting in another room for the night. This was against the regulations, but had been a common practice for years and was known and tolerated by management. Due to maintenance work, Nielsen had a stand-by controller and system manager on call. Nielsen was unaware of this. When Nielsen realised that the situation had subtly increased beyond his span of control, it was too late to summon assistance.

Several of the Skyguide managers were eventually prosecuted for negligent homicide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Cberlingen_mid-air_collision

Do we want that kind of accident to handle here because some greedy private company wants to save money by cutting corners? The U.S. has one of the best ATC systems in the world. It ain't broke, so don't "fix" it.

[lastlib]

7. And just wait'll they try to outsource it to India......

[rurallib]

3. "you don't pay up, you fly til you run out of gas"

[LiberalAndProud]

4. First things first.

Before 2001, the airlines were responsible for providing airport security; the costs were included in the base fare structure. After TSA’s formation, taxpayers assumed the responsibility for the bulk of the cost of federally mandated and staffed airport checkpoints.

The TSA now costs Americans $8 billion a year and has cost approximately $60 billion since its inception. The FY 2012 Consolidated Spending Act (Public Law 112-074), signed into law in December, appropriated $7.85 billion to TSA, an increase of $153 million from 2011, and included funding to expand the deployment of body scanners to smaller airports.

http://tsanewsblog.com/1625/news/is-tsa-just-another-airline-subsidy/

[hootinholler]

5. What rocket surgeon at the post farted this?

In an ideal world the FAA would be entirely funded from fees and not subject to the whims of partisan budgetary wrestling.

[caraher]

6. Sorry, I'll add the author

"Joshua L. Schank, an urban planner, is president and chief executive of the nonprofit Eno Center for Transportation, which seeks to improve transportation policy. From 2007 to 2011, he directed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Transportation Policy Project."

Basically an industry guy, I'd imagine...

Apparently he'd been an advisor to Hillary Clinton...

[dballance]

8. Important Note: Canada's "Private" Air Traffic Control is a Non-Profit. No Shareholders, No Wall St.

From the linked article: "A private nonprofit corporation has been responsible for air traffic control in Canada since the Canadian government sold Nav Canada in 1996; it receives no public funding." I can see how that might work.

But we won't go with a non-profit here in the US. We'll screw it up and let some big for-profit company buy out air traffic control. Then it'll be worse than the machinations of congressional budgeting. It will be a slave to Wall Street and quarterly earnings reports. It won't be furloughs that will be an issue it will be layoffs to make sure the company meets expected earnings and the CEO gets a fat bonus.

[caraher]

9. Good point

It's the profit motive that screws up things like this. The same happens in health care. Some European countries (I think Switzerland is one; maybe Germany?) have a private health insurance system, but they're all nonprofit.

[pipoman]

10. Yes, it should be..