America’s air traffic control is run as “an old-fashioned bureaucracy inside of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The system is antiquated, mismanaged, and is headed for a crisis as aviation demands continue to rise,” says economist Chris Edwards:
The solution is privatization, which President Trump supported during his first term. In 2017, a bill modeled on Canada’s privatized ATC system passed the House Transportation Committee but then stalled. At the time, Trump said our ATC system was “stuck, painfully, in the past … ancient, broken, antiquated.”
On December 17, the CEO of JetBlue said “better technology” and “more hiring” were needed reduce flight delays. ABC News reported two weeks ago that “dangerously low staffing in the towers and decaying equipment” have triggered widespread concern in Congress.
A September 23 GAO report found that dozens of the FAA’s air traffic control systems are outdated. Bob Poole, an aviation expert at the Reason Foundation, called an overhaul long overdue, pointing out that “countless studies have shown that other countries’ ATC systems are better-managed, better-funded, and better-supplied with advanced technology.”
As Edwards notes, privatization could improve things a lot:
A great example is Canada. Our northern neighbor privatized its ATC in 1996 as a self-funded nonprofit corporation called Nav Canada. ATC funding was changed from a ticket tax to direct charges on system users. Nav Canada charges for terminal services, flying through Canadian airspace, and oceanic services.
This structure removes ATC from politicized government budgets and paves the way for ongoing efficiency improvements and innovation, which are the keys to shorter flight times, fewer delays, greater safety, and lower aviation fuel costs.
The privatized Canadian system has won numerous international awards and is a leader in many technologies. Canada and Europe are ahead of us, for example, on remote or digital towers, which surround runways with cameras and sensors to feed large video screens in control buildings.
