Grayson: Don’t entrust safety in skies to the lowest bidder
A couple of years ago, the Obama administration proposed eliminating federal air-traffic-control funding at 100-plus small airports around the country, including five in Central Florida. One of them — Kissimmee Airport — was in my congressional district. Kissimmee Airport has more than 100,000 takeoffs and landings each year.
I contacted the cognizant federal bureaucrat, and pointed out to him that:
Kissimmee Airport controls the airspace over Disney World.
Al-Qaida listed Disney World as a target. End of story. The administration took Kissimmee Airport off its “hit list.” The administration recognized that air-traffic-control is not strictly a matter of dollars and cents, but rather a matter of life and death.
The great sociologist Max Weber pointed out that the government has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, force and coercion. In all modern societies, only the government can order you to do something, whether it’s stopping at a traffic light, paying your taxes or going to prison.
When an air-traffic controller tells a pilot to move 10 degrees left and 500 feet down, it’s not a suggestion. It’s not a recommendation. It’s an order. That controller must be cloaked in the authority of the government, and he or she must have no consideration in mind other than public safety. President Bill Clinton recognized this when he ruled that airtraffic control is an “inherently governmental” function. (President George W. Bush later rescinded Clinton’s Executive Order.)
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, an arm of Congress, has gone so far as to conclude that handing air-traffic control off to any private entity would likely be unconstitutional. That handoff would give that private entity coercive power over other private entities, which would violate the Due Process Clause under the 1935 Carter Coal decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. (It also would violate the president’s authority under the Appointments Clause.) The Congressional Research Service indicated that no private entity can or should be given authority to set fees, create air-traffic-control procedures, control traffic flow or make modernization decisions.
For sure, the last thing that I want on that air-traffic controller’s mind is how to make a buck. Proponents of “privatizing” air-traffic control posit, as an article of faith, that somehow it would be cheaper if a for-profit corporation were performing air-traffic control. (They somehow overlook the example of Medicare, which provides health care at a 3 percent overhead cost, far lower than any private insurer.)
In any case, air-traffic control is a monopoly. You’re never going to see airport-control towers competing against each other. Any economist will tell you that while competition may save money, monopoly wastes it. If you’re not sure about that, check your next cable TV bill. Why does the cable company charge you hundreds of dollars for a service that costs it just pennies to provide? Because it can; it’s a monopoly. And so would a privatized air-traffic-control corporation.
Privatizing air-traffic control is not a new idea. It’s been tried before — and failed. In the United Kingdom, its National Air Traffic Services is a hermaphrodite “public-private partnership” that controls traffic at 14 airports. NATS has not relieved the taxpayers of their burden; it needed an injection of 130 million pounds sterling after Sept. 11. And a scary 2014 collapse in NATS air-traffic control has been pinned to an unwise effort by NATS to “economize” by postponing software updates.
Which is precisely the point. Air-traffic control is not about saving money. It’s about saving lives.
Air-traffic control is not a matter of dollars and cents, but rather a matter of life and death.