No sooner than the US presidential election result was clear than the nation’s airline industry chiefs leapt in to promote the case for the corporatisation of the Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Organization.
A long-time advocate of the move to spin off the nation’s air traffic control, Airlines for America (A4A), said it was looking forward to collaborating with president-elect Trump’s transition team on modernising air traffic infrastructure.
“Our ability to create more jobs and help fuel economic growth is possible only if we’re operating within a National Airspace (NAS) infrastructure that is designed for the future,” said A4A president and chief executive Nicholas Calio.
“Our vision for a modernised NAS includes reforming the air traffic control system so that politics don’t impede hiring and training more air traffic controllers and equipping our facilities with technology used by more than 50 countries around the world.”
“We want to see a reliable ATC funding model – funded by the system users, not political gamesmanship – so that we can plan for the long-term capital improvements the system needs to grow.”
Trump had indeed tabled a $1 trillion plan to improve the nation’s infrastructure as a campaign pledge, calling it a first 100-days priority. In that campaign he spoke of a need to transform America’s ‘crumbling infrastructure into a golden opportunity for accelerated economic growth and more rapid productivity gains with a deficit-neutral plan targeting substantial new infrastructure investments’.
He added that these should harness market forces to help attract new private infrastructure investments through a deficit-neutral system of infrastructure tax credits and employ incentive-based contracting to ensure projects are on time and on budget.
Although transportation was not an overt campaign area of focus, it still came as music to the ears of A4A which numbers some of the largest US airlines within its ranks.
Opponents
Less welcoming are the established opponents of corporatisation – business and general aviation leaders – who have resisted air traffic reform as an attack on their membership.
“There will absolutely be another proposal to separate the air traffic control system,” NBAA president and chief executive Ed Bolen told the US business aviation association’s annual convention held just before the November 8 election day.
FAA reauthorisation, which was extended only until the end of 2017, will come up for debate again next year, and Bolen noted that A4A was renewing its push for an independent ATO through placing in various political publications advertorials promoting the move as a quick win for any new administration.
Bolen, cited by Aviation International News, said: “Because the big airlines seem so committed to pushing this, it seems inevitable that this will be part of the policy discussion. The question on the table is what’s going to be different this time around.”
The sole legislative bid was Congressman Bill Shuster’s bill earlier this summer which while it overcame bipartisan opposition failed to gain support in the House. Senators meanwhile succeeded in pushing the House to consider their own reauthorisation bill which did not feature any spin off plan but simply extended aviation programmes for another 18 months.
Republican congressman Shuster – chairman of the House transportation committee and the strongest congressional ally for corporatization – was easily re-elected and so the prospects are far brighter should he return to the fray.
The Obama administration had chosen to stay out of the debate and remain neutral but as GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce noted, if a new administration came forward with a proposal then it would undoubtedly change the current opponents’ approach to fighting the move.
Confusion
ATM industry veteran Neil Planzer of Washington D.C.-based consultancy PlanzerMcLean tells Air Traffic Management there is a great deal of confusion as the election results settle in – very similar to the Brexit surprise that heralded Britain’s exit from the European unio.
“Even so, with the new president-elect we can count on change, he has not spoken much on ATM or NextGen but with change a certainty we can on outcomes that will be different.”
He points out that current FAA administrator Michael Huerta will not be reappointed when his term ends in January 2018. “An important consideration will be if he stays after the transition to the new administration,” says Planzer.
Although significant change in programmes over the next six months to one year are unlikely Planzer says the US industry will be watching closely who takes the leadership roles in the Department of Transportation (DoT) and the FAA.
“With a Republican House and Senate many changes will happen but I doubt that our ATM industry will be the priority,” says Planzer, who adds that he is choosing to be optimistic and that any change will be positive.
NATCA, the US air traffic controllers’ unio was distinctly more muted in its reception. Another long-time advocate of corporatisation, its president Paul Rinaldi and executive vice president Trish Gilbert said they looked forward to working with the new administration to secure a stable, predictable funding stream for the NAS.
“This will be essential to protecting the system and the workforce that safeguards it, while also implementing modernisation efforts and providing air travellers the safety and professionalism they deserve,” they said, adding that they also looked forward to working with the Trump administration to ‘further advance the tremendously successful collaborative relationship we’ve built with the FAA and DoT over the last eight years, which has yielded positive results.”
