Stuck in 20th century

This nation's air-traffic control, we mean

Rocky Mountain News

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Last month, the U.S. Senate came oh so close to passing legislation that would bring this country's air-traffic control system out of the 1950s.

This week the effort failed when senators were unable to get a 60-vote majority to end debate on H.R. 2881, effectively killing the bill.

We should shed no tears, however. The rationale for the legislation largely evaporated when a plan to impose a modest $25 landing fee on most flights was stripped from the legislation. Instead, the version of H.R. 2881 that died would have boosted aviation funding by increasing fuel taxes paid by business jets.

Forcing general aviation users to shoulder more of the air-traffic control burden is welcome; the Federal Aviation Administration says general aviation provides only 3 percent of the funding but accounts for 17 percent of the system's use. But once the user fees were gone, any real reforms in the bill were illusory since the fees had been linked to a separate funding stream that stood a better chance of not being looted by Congress for other purposes.

Make no mistake, without some dedicated revenue stream to finance upgrades in infrastructure, this nation's air-traffic system will continue to guide planes with ground-level radar and other technological holdovers from the last century.

U.S. airlines are doing their best to incorporate modern technologies into our antiquated infrastructure. Denver-based Frontier Airlines has begun using LIDO, software developed by Lufthansa that provides real-time updates on weather conditions, airport closings and the like.

With LIDO, pilots can change their flight path while aloft, rather than relying on flight plans that were completed hours before takeoff and require major diversions if the weather unexpectedly worsens. This makes air travel safer and less choppy for passengers. And it can save fuel.

LIDO is a remarkable improvement. But it's so 20th century compared with GPS technology and other advances being deployed by Australia, Canada and several European countries, which have invested billions in state-of- the-art technology.

How have they done it? For one thing, unlike the United States, they have independent air-traffic agencies that are largely immune from political manipulation.

In recent years, congressional appropriators have routinely given the FAA hundreds of millions of dollars less than budgets have authorized for equipment purchases and capital requests. Creating an independent entity to manage air-traffic control with funding that can't be raided by Congress is the only way to adequately finance needed infrastructure.

General aviation users go ballistic at any mention of user fees. They say that passenger jets and other large planes should pay the lion's share of the system's costs.

But when it comes to takeoffs and landings, the current air-traffic system treats a single-engine Cessna no differently than a double-decker Airbus A380. Each occupies a single slot when it arrives or departs. So why shouldn't each pay the same fee to occupy that space?

As Reason Foundation transportation analyst Robert Poole has noted, independent air-traffic agencies have financed their investments by issuing revenue bonds repaid with the fees they've collected. A user-fee structure in the United States could do likewise, quickly raising the estimated $10 billion needed to pay for a new system over the next decade.

Modernization has bipartisan support. The Clinton administration first supported an independent air-traffic control agency in 1995. The next president, working with a new Congress, should reform the FAA in a way that lets the latest technologies take flight.

• May 7, 2008

  7:29 a.m.

  Suggest removal

  Spencer writes:

  wasn't this what they were striking about?

• May 7, 2008

  10:32 p.m.

  Suggest removal

  DenverGeschlossenator writes:

  It seems pretty obvious nobody with an aviation background was consulted for this one. How about mentioning that 90-95% of general aviation flights are completed under visual flight rules and hence have little to no interaction with the air traffic control system. All airline flights are completed under instrument flight rules and use vastly more FAA resources than "Cessnas." There are already extremely expensive landing fees that discourage small private planes from landing at major hub airports.

  Setting up a bureaucracy to collect user fees from general aviation aircraft would basically eat up all the fees collected on such aircraft. Continuing to collect a fuel tax is easy and the bureaucracy is already in place. The reason that Australia and Canada are instituting Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (the GPS control system that you are referring to) faster than we are is that they have vast areas that had no radar coverage before, so ADSB is a relatively easy way to get a radar-like picture. We already have total radar coverage in the lower 48, so the FAA is understandably slower in implementing the technology here.

  Next time you're flying United, flip over to channel 9, listen to the call signs, and see how many of the aircraft are airlines. Here's a hint, it's almost all of them. Massive departure and arrival banks into hub airports is what necessitates a huge part of all the FAA air traffic control infrastructure.

  Those other aviation authorities are doing some good things, and our FAA is doing some bad things, but trying to kill off general aviation by transferring costs that are rightfully paid by the airlines to private aircraft that basically don't use air traffic control would be a huge mistake, and would most certainly hurt our economy and many small businesses.

• May 8, 2008

  11:54 a.m.

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  jfkatm writes:

  To some degree the previous comment is correct - VFR aircraft/pilots may choose not to take advantage of the Air Traffic Control system - but in some cases, especially around busy airports, they are required to participate to keep the conjested airspace safe.

  More importantly, there are enormous taxpayer investments tied up in the many public use airports around the country - especially those surrounding major metropolitan areas. Most of these communities do not finance airports out of their own pockets but look to the Feds for up to 90% of airport funding - runways and taxiways for example.

  Who uses these airports? General aviation flights.

  Our Aviation Trust Fund covers most of the infrastructure of the National Airspace System and to a large degree the users do pay - some more than their fair share.