ATC Privatization

There is a thread in P&R about the ATC Privatization that folks participating here may want to weigh in on.

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/politics-religion-not-faint-heart/553592-infrastructure-week-atc.html

 

Not just EAA. NBAA, AOPA, Delta Airlines.

 

The National Business Aircraft Association came out with this rebuttal to the ATC privatization legislation.
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Delta is the lone wolf amongst the US majors. The others have been pushing for the privatization.

 

In remarks that were stunning in frankness and candor, EAA chairman Jack Pelton blasted House Transportation Committee chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania) and the Trump Administration for their tactics in attempting to hijack the General Aviation Caucus and “ramrodding” air traffic control privatization legislation to congressional approval. “There's been more dirty politics on this than I've ever seen,” said Pelton on Monday at AirVenture. This includes scheduling meetings for general aviation input when Congress was not in session and pro-privatization congressional leaders threatening colleagues who oppose the legislation with retaliation, including withholding natural disaster insurance relief.

Pelton said there are numerous reasons to oppose privatization as currently constructed in the legislation, including: removal of local control of contract tower operations; the inability of a privatized entity to provide special-event ATC; and liability to high-traffic events such as AirVenture, The Masters golf tournament, Nascar races, and the Super Bowl; non-competitive nature of how the ATC contract will be awarded as the legislation is currently drafted; and questions about the costs of capital rate of return and the amount of capital required to fund modernization.

“The new privatized ATC system will have no sovereignty. There's nothing in the bill that says privatized ATC needs to support [special events],” Pelton said, adding that Shuster purposely excluded such events from the bill unless GA organizations agreed to support privatization. “There are things that have happened in the last two weeks with regard to the whipping [to gain support for the bill] that downright look illegal,” Pelton said.

He said groups that joined the United GA Front that opposed the bill had been threatened with legislative payback unless they endorsed the bill and urged all their members to support it. “It's Tony Soprano at work. It's just fantastic,” Pelton said. “Right now there are meetings going on virtually every day with Shuster and [Rep. Sam] Graves [R-Missouri] with congressmen who are undecided or who said they would vote 'no'” who are being subjected to strong-arm tactics, Pelton said. He cited a Northern Wisconsin congressman whose district suffered flooding and needed insurance relief. According to Pelton, that congressman was told, “You vote no on privatization and that insurance bill will never see the light of day.”

Pelton said the argument that privatization is required for modernization was a canard and the issue could be solved if Congress would provide the FAA with stable, multi-year funding for its technology upgrade programs. “[Private] lenders don't provide capital for free,” Pelton said. “You're starting out without enough revenue to cover the cost of what has been put into it. This thing is a slippery slope that gets to the point [real fast] where they say, 'We need to up our revenue because we are not covering costs that we have to absorb.' Congressman Shuster was really pointed in saying that we aren't going to give you GA [general aviation] guys any more seats [on the private ATC board] because you don't provide any revenue to the system. You guys are going to have no voice.”

Calling the pending legislation “privatization” is really a misnomer, Pelton said. “It's a ramrod job that they think will be a tipping point for other privatization activities to occur. The President's [corporate chief] pilot likes to say he likes to blow things up and reconstruct them, because they are better in the end. That's probably okay with an apartment building or a casino or somewhere where there is not public safety at stake. You blow this up and it doesn't get reconstructed properly and we will have huge issues from national security to the flying public.”

Pelton said that the average airline CEO is in office less than five years and likely won't be around when the legislation is implemented, but general aviation users will. “We will be the ones who suffer.”

 

Hope that better sense prevails.


Senate Appropriators Move To Block ATC Reform Proposal
by Kerry Lynch
- July 26, 2017, 11:34 AM
The full U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee tomorrow is set to consider a Fiscal Year 2018 transportation budget bill that would provide a $500 million boost to the FAA’s annual budget and block the Trump Administration from creating an independent organization to run the nation’s air traffic control. Appropriations Committee consideration follows approval of the FY2018 Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) appropriations bill by the THUD subcommittee yesterday.

“This bipartisan bill is the product of considerable negotiation and compromise, and makes the necessary investments in our nation’s infrastructure,” said THUD chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine). THUD ranking Democrat Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) agreed the bill makes “smart transportation investments,” but also praised it for “block[ing] bad policy by barring the Trump Administration from pursuing an unwise scheme to privatize our air traffic control system.” Collins added, “Our bill strikes the right balance between thoughtful investment and fiscal restraint, thereby setting the stage for future economic growth.”

According to the committee, the bill would provide $16.97 billion in budgetary resources, amounting $563 million in additional funding over the current fiscal year. This includes $1.1 billion for NextGen investments and full funding for the contract tower program, Senate appropriators said.

The rejection of the ATC reform efforts underscores the uphill battle the independent ATC organization proposal faces should it get through the House. The FAA reauthorization bill that contains the ATC proposal has yet to be scheduled for a vote, making it likely it will slide into September. However, the bill's chief architect, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania), has continued to hold out hope that he can push through the reauthorization bill, and told the Washington insider publication Politico that he was encouraged by the growing number of members who have agreed to vote in favor of the measure, saying ATC reform backers are gaining more support every day.

 

Schuster has been bringing this back each year lately.

Turns out that Schuster's girlfriend is the lobbyist for the US airline industry. This was reported a couple years ago. I would never expect any sort of cause and effect there, would you?

As reported today there may even be constitutional challenges to Schuster's bill.

There still does not appear to be any readiness for the Senate to approve privatization.