Monster Thunderstorms in Kansas

The case against privatizing Air Traffic Control in the US

Should government be able to privatize functions of agencies that are considered an essential service? Privatization has been en vogue for quite some time now with everything from Social Security to incarcerating inmates suggested as a method to shrink the size of government, lowering the tax burden on businesses and high net worth individuals. Whenever politicians gather and plan budgets, they work from the premise that all government is bad, providing nothing that private enterprise/free market cannot do better.  My contention is government is not a business and as such, should not be run like one. Government exists for the good of every citizen and the idea of winners and losers, profit and loss, surpluses and balanced budgets while desirous in a business have no place in the operating of our democracy.

The Trump administration recently launched “Infrastructure Week” attempting to steer a series of programs through congress with the intent of getting Americans back to work- rebuilding what the President described as our nation’s “third world infrastructure” (@CNNPolitics “President Trump compares the US infrastructure to that of a ‘third-world country’" Twitter,  15 August 2017  https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/897590249928437760) The first program proposed was privatizing Air Traffic Control, wresting the system from control of the Federal Aviation Administration division of the Department of Transportation.  This has been proffered a number of times starting with the Reagan administration and has been revisited by every administration since.

Air Transportation contributes 5.1% to the US gross domestic product moving 2,586,582 domestic/international passengers a year on 26,527 average daily scheduled flights.  Close to 40 billion pounds of freight were carried in 2016 and the annual earnings in aviation jobs runs $446.8 billion

(“Air Traffic By the Numbers” Federal Aviation Administration https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/ Accessed 2 September 2017)

            Many of the complaints about the FAA and their stewardship of Air Traffic control stem from the way the government currently funds the agency. The FAA has been subject to the budget/spending cap tug of war that has been occurring over the past several years. Since sequestration starting in 2013 the agencies budget has remained flat receiving funding from a series of short term spending bills rather than a proper budget. Keeping up an ever-expanding amount of air traffic, implementing next generation air traffic control technologies, serving as the nations aviation regulator by both codifying the rules and ensuring their compliance, are all agency functions. These essential services require a stable budget with regular moderate increases to accommodate an ever-expanding purview. (“Privatizing Air Traffic Control” Aerospace America Debra Werner June 2017 https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/privatizing-air-traffic-control/ Retrieved 2 September 2017)  This is a typical strategy used often by congress, creating situations where they defund an essential service then announce to the nation how the agency providing the service is going under and needs to be disbanded, broken up and sold to the private sector.

With all that at stake I believe that privatizing Air Traffic Control is a bad idea. Now my free market friends will tell me that the market and competition will cull the overly expensive and inefficient from the field and provide better service than any government entity, but in this case the proposal is to give control of the nation's air traffic to a private non profit corporation, founded just for this purpose. The fallacy of the free market/competition argument is the plan doesn't create multiple companies to run ATC, who will then compete for and win our business. Rather it creates just one, who will then be awarded the best system globally which handles more traffic safely than any other country in the world. 

Under HR2997 the house bill that removes ATC from the FAA, the non-profit will have a board of directors composed of 13 members, with representation from each of the stakeholders in aviation. The airlines and their employee unions will have four seats on the board. Hub airports and the Air Traffic Control unions will also be equally represented with General Aviation, or the private sector, receiving just two seats. Many have concerns that the airlines, their labor unions, the ATC unions and hub airports whose interests are closely aligned will band together effectively ceding the nations air traffic control system to the airlines. All of the big three airlines have undergone reorganization via bankruptcy several times over the past few decades, while ATC has shouldered its duties through boom or bust.  (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association “ATC Privatization Pitfalls Point By Point” 12 July 2017 Joe Kilda Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2017/july/12/get-the-facts-about-atc-privatization)

We've gone down this privatization road before, just a short time ago with the FAA spinning off the Flight Service Stations to a private contractor. We were promised that the acquisition of these services by one of the country's leading defense contractors (Lockheed Martin) would greatly improve the service, as the company would then modernize the product, bringing to bear all of the conveyances of recent technology and delivery methods that the stodgy old federal government could only dream about.  One of the first things they accomplished was the closing and consolidation of these government weather stations and reporting service facilities into just a few, located on either side of the continent. The employees were offered continued employment but naturally they would have to move to these new locations to keep their jobs 

The change was rolled out in 2007 just before Airventure Oshkosh, the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual convention and the world’s largest gathering of aviators in Wisconsin each year. Regulars like myself (I have attended sixteen of the past seventeen years) witnessed the rollout in person as Lockheed Martin personnel staffed the former FAA FSS offices and the trailers on the show grounds, and in true trade-show fashion their facilities were replete with swag emblazoned with their logo. Small bottles of hand sanitizer, and sun block lip balms were all the rage as you waited for your briefing usually given by a recently ex-federal employee who had neither the seniority to retire, nor deep enough roots to keep them from relocating to D.C./Virginia or the Arizona locations of the newly private enterprise. 

What was telling to me was the briefers were using the same old government web sites and government collected data that I used to formulate my own picture of the weather. What went missing was the local resident's perspective of the weather, the picture and trends, nay insight, which made the service an invaluable safety component of the preflight process for those of us lacking a dispatch department to determine our routes around inclement weather. Soon thereafter with the budget sequestration their presence at the show ended bringing to light that the service wasn't donated and they weren't volunteers.

I stopped using them regularly after the color-coded terrorism alert system came online. This had telephone preflight weather briefers more concerned about whether I would pledge I had first received and then follow the prerecorded security Notices to Airmen (NOTAMS) announced prior to even receiving a briefing.  As technology advanced I started receiving my briefings electronically via a mélange of different internet sources and when I started flying for a regional airline we had dispatchers who can look at the weather and give advice as to which way to turn. Similarly to the way Automated Teller Machines and Self Checkout lines at the grocery stores kept you from dealing with the surly bank teller or the “cannot make change without the register telling me what to give you” cashier, the poor performance of the Lockheed Martin personnel drove most of the flying population to use a source other than the privatized entity. This didn’t change their contract however and they continued to serve a diminishing population of pilots while receiving their agreed on rates.    

Beyond the cost reduction that made the private entity product immensely profitable, the effort yielded no tangible results except eliminating a workforce of middle class union employees- always a priority to many of our congressional members.  The cost to the government remained the same as services declined and Lockheed received a multi-year contract extension after which they sold the business to another corporation who has degraded the services even further as they provide “return on the shareholder’s equity”

The difference between government agencies and private corporations is that corporation’s by nature are sociopathic. A corporation’s sole purpose in the world is to enrich the shareholder- everything else is secondary. There isn’t anything wrong with this behavior, it is how many successful businesses operate, but government cannot, existing to service the entirety of its constituency.  Essentially when it comes to FAA/ATC, you can get your weather information from a multitude of places -but you can't get Air Traffic Control from anyone but ATC. Let's not make the same mistake in privatization by giving a national asset away to be run like a business.

Volunteering

While I am not privy to what motivates others to volunteer, there are a number of reasons I will contribute my time to an organization or cause.  Typically my reasons are threefold.  The first is a belief in the organization’s core values. I will volunteer to help raise awareness of their cause, helping to further their goals. Secondly, I like to volunteer as a method of giving back to a community, which has directly impacted or benefitted my life.  Lastly I have volunteered as an in-kind donation when I have lacked the funds to monetarily support the cause.

I routinely volunteer at aviation conventions for industry advocacy organizations.  Among others I am presently a member of Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), Experimental Aircraft Organization (EAA), Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP). I have volunteered my time for these organizations at one time or another.

Founded in 1976, the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals encourages minorities to pursue aviation and aerospace careers. I have donated time to OBAP because they bring awareness of aviation as a career choice to inner city youth that prior to their introduction to the association may have not been considered.  OBAP offers summer camps for fourteen to eighteen year olds called ACE academies. Trips are organized which bring bus loads of students to United, JetBlue and Delta facilities in Chicago, New York, Orlando and Atlanta where they are introduced to dispatchers, pilots, mechanics, schedulers, and flight attendants. Tours though maintenance hangars and aircraft all culminate with a full motion aircraft simulator ride where they receive a lesson in operating a transport category jet aircraft. OBAP members presently employed by these contributing companies arrange all this, most of who will state that having someone introduce them to aviation as a youth helped drive them towards their career choice.  High school students are offered opportunities to compete for training scholarships to help defray the costs of certification.  I have volunteered at two of their conventions in Las Vegas and Chicago registering attendees and assisting with the administration of the events.

The Experimental Aircraft Organization was founded in 1953 out of the interest of amateur aircraft kit builders. Since then, the association has morphed into an amalgamation of all manners of aviation interests. Vintage, production, kit built, and aerobatic aircraft all have chapters within the EAA. Their annual convention is called Airventure Oshkosh and for one week a year Wittman Regional Airport becomes the busiest airport in the world.  Volunteering for the EAA at their “learn to fly discovery center” is essentially selling learning to fly to an interested audience at the world largest aviation event held in Wisconsin. As a licensed flight instructor, I among dozens of others, staff a sixteen hundred square foot tent answering questions about what is required to obtain a pilot certificate. We’re there to put a face on general aviation and let the nonflying public know that the little airport in their hometown is staffed with people similar to ourselves, who are approachable and would be very happy to introduce them to an activity that has changed our lives measurably.

My “In Kind donation” volunteering is usually for the AOPA where I have been a member since 1986.  The Aircraft Owners and Pilot Association is a Washington DC based organization that was founded in 1939 to represent the owners and operators of light aircraft in front of our national government. Essentially a lobbying entity, with an air safety foundation, their mission is to support “your freedom to fly”. When I owned a flight school I donated the use of one of our full motion flight simulators to their annual Aviation Summit in Hartford Connecticut. A three-day event we closed our business for a week while the simulator manufacturer packaged up our box and shipped it to the convention center. My wife and I worked the show for three days and we gave out thirty-six hours of simulator rides in six-minute intervals.  As I did not posses the financial wherewithal to contribute in a substantial matter, volunteering the assets of my business and services of my wife and myself was more than an adequate method of donating to the association.

There are many different ways to contribute to causes in our community, and the reasons people choose to validate their volunteerism are as varied as those who participate. I hope the aforementioned examples have detailed my motivation, providing a better understanding of just one person’s charitable giving.