Originally published at: ATC Privatization, Again?
The Washington Post renews familiar questions about safety, funding and access to the national airspace system.
The mention of NavCanada makes me cringe. The controlers, when there are a sufficient amount are super professionnal. The key word here is sufficient. In the Montreal region we are faced with major airspace restrictions. No access is allowed for GA/training. This has been going on for years. We have class C and D airports where controllers must shutdown the tower during busy hours for their rest period. They cannot be blamed, the administration cannot hire or train sufficient amount of critical personnel. The fees increase every year with no great improvement in service. Hey flying friends in the USA, do yourselves a favour and avoid privatizing the FAA, you will loose your legendary aviation efficiency.
Well written and well balanced. Part of the discussion should also be what inherently government functions are. This “is a function which is so intimately related to the public interest as to mandate performance by Government employees. These functions are not in competition with the commercial sector. Therefore, these functions shall be performed by Government employees.” (OMB Circular A-76.) Since ATC services is not a commercial product, the government should not, according to this and supporting regulations, initiate contracts for these services. (Military contracts for logistic support, for example, procure services like transportation, construction, and life support that already exist in the commercial sector.) The constitution makes the regulation of interstate commerce a government function and OMB-76 also lists " regulation of the use of space, oceans, navigable rivers and other natural resources" as inherently governmental. The definition of regulation could just mean government oversight and allow for contracting the execution of those regulations, but it could also mean actively regulating activity, which is what ATC does.
Beware of misleading claims about Canada’s present ATC system.
It is not ‘private’ in the normal sense.
Rather it is managed by a consortium of affected persons via industry associations like AOPA and ATAC plus unions. With safety oversight by Transport Canada.
I is not a company as the term usually means, but a new kind of non-profit with no share capital just debt.
NavCanada had management wrinkles at the beginning but has been operating normally for many years now.
It improved services, including for overflights which gives it more income.
(I don’t know how cross-continent airline traffic is handled by FAA and NavCanada, flights commonly cross the border enroute, to get shortest effective air distance given winds and congestion. In one case years ago a Canadian airline’s flight was upset by turbulence form a US military heavy 747 flight, so diverted to Calgary.)
Same as US - FAA is short of controllers.
So nothing to do with ‘privatization’.
See my other posts explaining what NavCanada actually is.
Here is the issue with these comparisons of other countries: New Zealand has less than 500k operations annually, Chicago O’hare 890k. Chicago center handles 2.3 million operations annually. In the mid 90’s the FAA management touted Finlands air traffic control as the model to follow. Problem is Nashville TN TRACON had more operations than Finland. Congress uses the cash flow generated by taxes to try pet projects instead of training, recruiting, and improving the system.
And the recent incidents were due to poor procedures. The DCA midair was a procedural issue. Visual separation at night with converging traffic in a sea of city lights should not have been allowed. Plain and simple.
There is no comparison between the FAA’s size and performance and aby other ATC provider , as WL Retired mentions. Changing to a privatized system can have enormous consequences, and benifits are mostly supposition.
Lets polish what we have. We are the Gorilla of the world.
Best
Vince
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