Air traffic control reform
June 21 The Orange County Register
The U.S. air traffic control system has fallen woefully behind most of the rest of the world, but we may finally be on the cusp of a promising reform decades in the making.
In testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee last month, Reason Foundation Director of Transportation Policy Robert Poole identified three main problems with our existing system. …
One solution, which has earned support from the White House and within Congress, is to replace the FAA’s taxpayer-funded Air Traffic Organization with a federally chartered nonprofit corporation sustained by user fees. This would provide more flexibility and funding stability, including the opportunity to issue revenue bonds to finance longterm capital investments. The structure would make it similar to organizations like the American Red Cross, U.S. Olympic Committee, federal credit unions or rural electricity and telecommunications cooperatives, Poole noted. …
The nonprofit corporation model would much better align incentives to serve customers, from airlines and private pilots to, ultimately, commercial airline passengers. Crucially, it would also depoliticize funding and operations decisions.
“It creates a real customer focus,” Poole said. The existing system, by contrast, “does not put the customers in charge; it does not put their interests first” because “the FAA’s real customer is Congress.”
The idea is not so radical. In fact, more than 60 countries have adopted a form of “corporatization” over the past 30 years, leaving the U.S. as one of the relative few to do things the old way. And we do not have to look far for a positive example. Nav Canada, from our neighbor to the north, which operates the world’s second-largest air traffic system, adopted a similar format 20 years ago. …
It is clear that our air traffic control governance structure is as antiquated as much of the technology in use. Removing anti-competitive barriers and government interventions, from allowing for greater privatization of airports to adopting market-based pricing of gate slots and runway access, would improve the U.S. air transportation system even more, but the “corporatization” of air traffic control represents a positive, and probably necessary, first step.