For an alternate viewpoint, see “Point: Air Traffic Control Privatization Is Long Overdue.”
For the first time in decades, the administration, the Congress and the aviation industry are united on a detailed and aggressive plan to build a new air traffic control system. In fact, Congress has already approved more than a third of the money necessary to complete the project.
Unfortunately, misguided proponents of privatizing air traffic control have predictably gone into overdrive in trying to distract from this effort to promote their privatization agenda. The fact is, privatized ATC systems are not a panacea — they are a problem.
The privatized ATC models in Canada, the European Union and elsewhere are beset with a host of well-documented flaws, including delays and disruptions caused by funding and management instability, staffing shortages, safety concerns, technology breakdowns and other serious weaknesses.
Take, for example, Canada’s privatized system, called Nav Canada. A recent report by the International Civil Aviation Organization found that Canada’s safety oversight of Nav Canada has been significantly degraded since the country’s move to privatized ATC, and that the system now ranks below other G7 countries in key aviation safety metrics.
Canadian airline pilots and air traffic controllers have sounded an alarm about Nav Canada’s operations, noting a misplaced focus on “short-term balance sheet wins” at the expense of “a healthy, resilient system with enough people and experience to run it.” Controller shortages have caused travel disruptions at airports in Toronto, Winnipeg and Kelowna — all airports that are smaller and less operationally complex than many of America’s airports.
Or consider the United Kingdom’s privatized system, NATS, which now ranks among the worst for air traffic control delays. One IT system failure delayed more than 2,000 flights and 700,000 passengers, costing airlines more than $127 million in refunds and compensation, because a key NATS engineer was working from home and struggled to log in remotely. A major airline has included the U.K. in its “league of delays” and blasted it for mismanagement.
Airservices Australia, also a privatized system, has seen a decrease of almost 20 percent in the number of controllers in recent years.
Are we really expected to believe these privatized ATC systems are a model for the U.S. to emulate? Of course, the answer is no. What is needed is not ATC privatization, but real modernization, in the form of a breakthrough plan that Congress and the administration have supported with $12.5 billion in funding approved earlier this year for the first phase of the work.
This plan enjoys unprecedented bipartisan backing in both chambers of Congress and the administration. Equally important, 60 organizations representing the spectrum of the nation’s aviation industry have banded in a coalition called Modern Skies to support the program.
The results-driven plan invests in people, adding thousands of air traffic controllers. It invests in facilities, including 15 new towers and 15 co-located TRACONs. The plan will also invest in equipment by rolling out fiber, cellular and satellite communication systems and replacing more than 600 radar and enhanced controller displays.
In short, the plan makes a landmark capital investment that will usher in a new era of air transportation, based on American ingenuity and innovation. It will ensure that America’s aviation system — already the world’s best — remains the global gold standard for decades.
Anything diverting the focus from the critical work to make this plan a reality, particularly calls for emulating troubled ATC models already underperforming in smaller countries with less complex air traffic needs than our own, would be a foolhardy and unnecessary distraction that is bad for American aviation.
