ATC Privatization Bill

[mike_elliott]

Yesterday evening Ron and I participated in a stakeholders' conference call to align the various GA groups position to oppose the upcoming ATC privatization bill by Sen Shuster. The call was attended by all of the alphabet groups and make owners' associations along with a few senators. In the next couple of days, you will see a call to action to oppose this bill from NBAA, EAA, AOPA,NATC and others. Sen Shuster's bill will put control of the ATC system into the hands of the Commercial carriers without oversight by the taxpayers, albeit disguised as a NFP corporation with representatives from "all" groups. Bill Shuster is in a hurry to get this on the floor before the public can be made aware of the facts, and believe the myth that the government cannot oversee anything successfully. He stands to gain on this politically and is his motivation undoubtedly. Over the last decade, this lure has been thrown at the public many times unsuccessfully, but the lobbyist continue the pressure.

When you see the call to action, please give consideration to take the time and contact your Senators. Lets not be bullied.

 

Myths and Fact Surrounding Air Traffic Control Corporatization.pdf

[steingar]

Shuster's been bumping fuzzies with a very pretty airline lobbyist.  I can't believe the rest of Congress would be sufficiently gullible to transfer the power of taxation to the Executive, not even a little bit.  This comes up with every new administration, though I have to admit this is the first time its originated in Congress.

[mike_elliott]

GA.united.ATC.pdf

Here is a link to EAA's form letter to write your congresscritters. AOPA will have one up soon also, as will NBAA. Please take the time to make your voice heard, if you want to continue to enjoy GA in the coming years. Lets don't let a Monopoly fall into the control of those that want to make us disappear.

http://govt.eaa.org/ctas/oppose-air-traffic-control-privatization

[Tommy]

So much for draining the swamp...

[aviatoreb]

These swift legislative actions to make hidden changes before anyone can notice, have a real potential to make undesirable massive damage before anyone has time to react.  It is a successful even if underhanded legislative strategy to be guarded against, no matter what your position on a given bill, because we/you may not like the next bill they push through by the same strategy.  It sort of short circuits the intended process.

[RobertE]

You know, it's AOPA's and EAA's position that privatization is bad but if we're honest would any of us say that Lockheed Martin's (now Leikos") takeover of WX Brief was a bad thing?  Did service get better or worse?  My experience was that pretty everything got better.  Now, I'll admit, that taking ATC out of the political environment where 500K or 700K AOPA and EAA members have more clout than the economics would dictate will likely deprive GA of getting its wishes heard, I have trouble arguing that privatization will produce worse service than 10K (20K??) employees of the federal government.  I know this is blasphemy, but I just can't get behind trying to obstruct a move to a private vendor that cares about cost/service/value vs. a bureaucracy that doesn't.  Let's try a thought experiment.  Does anyone believe that, say, making your local FBO and all its employees a part of the federal government would improve service?

Am I crazy?

 

 

[Andy95W]

21 minutes ago, RobertE said:

You know, it's AOPA's and EAA's position that privatization is bad but if we're honest would any of us say that Lockheed Martin's (now Leikos") takeover of WX Brief was a bad thing?  Did service get better or worse?  My experience was that pretty everything got better.  Now, I'll admit, that taking ATC out of the political environment where 500K or 700K AOPA and EAA members have more clout than the economics would dictate will likely deprive GA of getting its wishes heard, I have trouble arguing that privatization will produce worse service than 10K (20K??) employees of the federal government.  I know this is blasphemy, but I just can't get behind trying to obstruct a move to a private vendor that cares about cost/service/value vs. a bureaucracy that doesn't.  Let's try a thought experiment.  Does anyone believe that, say, making your local FBO and all its employees a part of the federal government would improve service?

Am I crazy?

One question- have you flown much in Canada? As much as I really like Canada and Canadians, I used to hate flying there with my last job because the radios were terrible compared to the US.

This is my fear with privatization: when would the private corporation choose, on its own, to buy a new ATC radio- when they absolutely had to, or when they ought to because the old one was crap?  If it is a question of providing good service or saving a nickel, which will they choose? (And remember, they would have a monopoly.)

[Tommy]

6 hours ago, RobertE said:

You know, it's AOPA's and EAA's position that privatization is bad but if we're honest would any of us say that Lockheed Martin's (now Leikos") takeover of WX Brief was a bad thing?  Did service get better or worse?  My experience was that pretty everything got better.  Now, I'll admit, that taking ATC out of the political environment where 500K or 700K AOPA and EAA members have more clout than the economics would dictate will likely deprive GA of getting its wishes heard, I have trouble arguing that privatization will produce worse service than 10K (20K??) employees of the federal government.  I know this is blasphemy, but I just can't get behind trying to obstruct a move to a private vendor that cares about cost/service/value vs. a bureaucracy that doesn't.  Let's try a thought experiment.  Does anyone believe that, say, making your local FBO and all its employees a part of the federal government would improve service?

Am I crazy?

 

 

The short answer is yes.

The long answer is that the people that are lobbying hardest for this are the airlines because they are keen as hell to take over. They will charge whatever they like to squeeze GA out of the controlled air space. The service will be great except you can't afford it. 

I think when both EAA and AOPA think it's bad, you will be crazy to think otherwise. Unless you know something that neither EAA nor AOPA knows. It's the kind of public cynism and anti-expertism that has been driving the discourse lately with terrible consequences. Trust the experts, get behind them, and demand your representatives before it's too late. 

[Cyril Gibb]

I fly frequently in the US.  I haven't noticed any difference in the quality of service here or the US.  Have you flown in Canada after our privatization?  I'm pleased with the Canadian system now.  I think that Canada's involvement and sponsorship of satellite ADSB shows that NavCanada is keeping technology moving forward.  The slight reduction in the already trivial annual fee is a credit to their efforts to keep costs down.  I have no idea if privatisation in the US would be as well implemented.

Just another data point to consider.  I'd be interested in current critiques of Canadas ATC.  Anyone had problems?

[steingar]

I can't imagine any function more inherently governmental than air safety.  Also, talking about LM and flight services isn't necessarily the best comparison.  Who exactly calls them anymore, with the profusion of internet based briefing sources?

[Andy95W]

Cyril-  Canada's ATC service was always top notch from my experience.  The biggest difference I saw was that whenever we were handed off to a Canadian controller from a US facility, the radios were less clear, more faint, and generally less understandable than the US controllers' radios.  The reasoning we figured (and were told) was that after they privatized, they didn't spend as much money upgrading their equipment in order to save money.

My information is now about 12 years old, and I certainly could have been misinformed in the first place.  But it seemed to be a reasonable explanation at the time for something we all noticed.

[peevee]

10 minutes ago, steingar said:

I can't imagine any function more inherently governmental than air safety.  Also, talking about LM and flight services isn't necessarily the best comparison.  Who exactly calls them anymore, with the profusion of internet based briefing sources?

lockmart doesn't run flight service anymore, leidos I think merged with lockmart and took over? I'm not certain the mechanics of it. Point remains, no one calls flight service for anything anymore.

[Aviationinfo]

I like Canada and it's good people too, but let's be honest---their aviation industry is a shadow of the US's in terms of size and complexity and as of a few years ago they still had areas of no enroute radar coverage.   We aren't comparing apples to apples by looking at Canada.

In fact---I'm not certain we can compare apples to apples even by comparing with all of Europe.  I do know that ATC in Europe is extremely expensive for GA...

[Aviationinfo]

PS:  I remember the advent of Lockheed Martin FSSs.  The rollout was very poor.   It's working way better now but then again if we looked at the usage rates for FSS now vs what it was prior to the Internet, what would we find?

[Mcstealth]

On July 3, 2017 at 6:16 AM, Tommy said:

So much for draining the swamp...

Sitting Presidents can not remove an elected congressman. 

[bonal]

9 minutes ago, Mcstealth said:

Sitting Presidents can not remove an elected congressman. 

the swamp does not refer to members of the house and senate but to appointed B-crats that for the most part opperate under and as part of the administration like the EPA NTSB Dept of transportation FAA Dept of education and the worst one the IRS

[steingar]

10 minutes ago, bonal said:

the swamp does not refer to members of the house and senate but to appointed B-crats that for the most part opperate under and as part of the administration like the EPA NTSB Dept of transportation FAA Dept of education and the worst one the IRS

The saddest thing is GOP administrations and Congresses have all but declared war on the IRS, which is now utterly strapped for funds.  The reason this is sad is most analyses show that money put into the IRS comes back to the government ten-fold, mostly by finding tax cheats.  Sorry for the politics.

[Mcstealth]

2 hours ago, bonal said:

the swamp does not refer to members of the house and senate but to appointed B-crats that for the most part opperate under and as part of the administration like the EPA NTSB Dept of transportation FAA Dept of education and the worst one the IRS

Yes sir, I know. The linked article referred to Schumer, and I was baiting Tommy.  

[mike_elliott]

19 hours ago, RobertE said:

You know, it's AOPA's and EAA's position that privatization is bad but if we're honest would any of us say that Lockheed Martin's (now Leikos") takeover of WX Brief was a bad thing?  Did service get better or worse?  My experience was that pretty everything got better.  Now, I'll admit, that taking ATC out of the political environment where 500K or 700K AOPA and EAA members have more clout than the economics would dictate will likely deprive GA of getting its wishes heard, I have trouble arguing that privatization will produce worse service than 10K (20K??) employees of the federal government.  I know this is blasphemy, but I just can't get behind trying to obstruct a move to a private vendor that cares about cost/service/value vs. a bureaucracy that doesn't.  Let's try a thought experiment.  Does anyone believe that, say, making your local FBO and all its employees a part of the federal government would improve service?

Am I crazy?

 

 

RobertE,

It is not only the AOPA and EAA that think to give a monopoly to a private corp a bad idea, 46 other aviation groups think so also, 1 doesn't. Guess who that is?

 

GA.united.ATC 2.pdf

[Tommy]

On Thursday, 6 July 2017 at 7:21 AM, bonal said:

the swamp does not refer to members of the house and senate but to appointed B-crats that for the most part opperate under and as part of the administration like the EPA NTSB Dept of transportation FAA Dept of education and the worst one the IRS

No one really knows what your President was referring to when he talked about "the swamp." He never really gave any specific target except the Clintons. To be perfectly honest with you, no one really knows much of what he is talking about most of the time anyway...

Everyone's definition of the swamp will be different. And that's how he baited his voters. Emotive but vague so all the hopefuls could define "the swamp" in the way that they wanted and made him a President believing that he will be doing exactly that.

To me, privatising ATC monopoly into the hands of corporates including major airlines flies directly in the face of how I define "draining the swamp."

 

[Guest]

On July 5, 2017 at 11:10 AM, Aviationinfo said:

I like Canada and it's good people too, but let's be honest---their aviation industry is a shadow of the US's in terms of size and complexity and as of a few years ago they still had areas of no enroute radar coverage.   We aren't comparing apples to apples by looking at Canada.

In fact---I'm not certain we can compare apples to apples even by comparing with all of Europe.  I do know that ATC in Europe is extremely expensive for GA...

To be fair Canada and the US have similar sized land mass, yet we have a population the size of California.  It would be hard and foolish for us to provide radar coverage for areas where no one lives.  

It's also a reason that Nav Canada, our national private ATC service is looking to satellite ADS-B service not ground based as in the US.

Clarence

[Andy95W]

4 minutes ago, M20Doc said:

To be fair Canada and the US have similar sized land mass, yet we have a population the size of California.

So, what I'm hearing is that Canada is just like California, just with more snow and Eskimos...

[Tommy]

"The botched ADS-B ... is a great example: Its behind schedule, over budget and untested. They're not even sure ADS-B is going to work in a terminal environment - so they can retire RADAR as the primary system? Additionally, they have discovered they need many more transceivers than originally thought. Then there's the question as to why the US chose to be the only country in the world to use 978 as opposed to 1090 which the rest of the modern world uses?"

None of these technical issues will kill the GA industry.

Privatising ATC monopoly into the hands of corporate airlines will. You will stop flying when you get charged, let's say, $500 each time your ADS-B showed up in or near a controlled airspace.

 

[Aviationinfo]

The reason we started talking about Canada is because somebody held it up as an example of what we need in the US.   I hold that not to be the case.

1 hour ago, M20Doc said:

To be fair Canada and the US have similar sized land mass, yet we have a population the size of California.  It would be hard and foolish for us to provide radar coverage for areas where no one lives.  

It's also a reason that Nav Canada, our national private ATC service is looking to satellite ADS-B service not ground based as in the US.

Clarence

Clarence, the reason there are/were large areas of non radar coverage in Canada has to do with the amount of air traffic, which is the point I was trying to make.  If you had hundreds of transcontinental crossings every day there would be radar coverage.  Your system is not the same size as ours---that's absolutely not intended as a slight, just a statement of comparison.    Your system works for you, our system could use some improvements,  but I feel we don't need to privatize ours and completely change the funding and governance in order to fix any procurement issues we may have.

 

[Guest]

I never took your post as a slight, just trying to point out some differences based on population and geography.  We already have a large number of flights passing through our northern airspace and have ADS-B for the Hudson Bay region.

Clarence