The Debacle Story Continues

In November of 2007 I posted an article, The General Aviation Tsunami.  That story was only the beginning of the disaster to come.  Hundreds of jobs were lost and over $100 million of invested capital became worthless.  Two highly regarded companies, TAG Aviation USA and AMI Jet Charter, were decimated by one of the best examples of over regulation and malicious prosecution by the Federal Government.  Supposedly the revocation of the operating certificate of AMIJC, a company with a perfect safety record for 10 years, was done in the name of safety.

Recently, Bill Garvey, editor of Business & Commercial Aviation magazine, tells the story in an excellent article, Lessons From a Debacle.  Bill says, “Now that emotions have calmed slightly, it’s time to consider what it all meant.”

I was reminded again this week about the injustice of the FAA when I read a story in the Wall Street Journal about the FAA’s plan to fine American Eagle, a unit of American Airlines, $2.9 million for a safety violation involving over 1,100 flights.  The FAA fined AMIJC $10 million, the largest fine ever, for ceding operational control of their charter flights to a foreign corporation who was an AMIJC minority investor. That investor was TAG Aviation USA, a highly experienced aircraft management company owned by a Swiss organization.  This fine was paid in full.  It is highly unlikely American Eagle will pay anything close to $2.9 million as fines like this are always appealed and substantially reduced.  AMIJC never had that chance – when they tried, the FAA simply revoked their certificate, laying waste to the company’s future.

My emotions haven’t calmed, even slightly.

Is NextGen Dead?

Maybe Not

Those who know me well and those who follow this blog know that I have been a long-time advocate of moving the Air Traffic Control away from the operational control of the FAA and making it an independent self-sustaining organization.  Today our large complicated and antiquated ATC system is dependent on the whims of Congress and the Administration.  Four of more times Congress has failed to approve a budget for the FAA.  In the State of the Union address the President proposed a budget freeze, which I initially thought NextGen, the long overdue remaking of ATC, would be pushed even further into eternity.  However, just two weeks later the White House asked Congress for a $1.14 billion budget in Fiscal Year 2011 for NextGen, a 31-percent increase from the FY 2010 figure.  There will be a lot of debate on the budget so stay tuned.

My friend Bob Poole recently asked me to review and comment on an article he has written on NextGen that will be published in the March issue of Professional Pilot magazine.  Bob is the founder of the Reason Foundation, a public policy think tank, and has for many years advised Administration officials of both parties on transpiration issues, especially ATC and airport security

Bob makes the case for the many advantages of NextGen.  But he also lays out the complications of making it happen.  The technology is here today and in a perfect world every airplane could fly the best route and takeoff on and land on time.  Fuel burns and carbon emission would be reduced.  No one disagrees on these points, but on funding NextGen there is little agreement.  Understandably the airlines and business aviation is not willing to pay for the expensive new equipment that is necessary to fly in a NextGen system until they are assured that NextGen will be in place on a date certain.  Too often the aviation community has made the investment and seen some new FAA driven technology fail to be developed or pushed far into the future.

Over ten years ago Canada “depoliticized” their ATC system, which was a part of Transport Canada, the equivalent of our Department of Transportation. Unshackled from their government except for safety regulation, the independent and not-for-profit NavCanada jumped far ahead of the United States in ATC service and technology – not quite NextGen, but they are moving rapidly in that direction.

Is it possible that the debate over the budget freeze could finally push the unshackling of the U.S. ATC system forward and create for our country what every other non-third world nation has?  An ATC system that pays for itself and operates as any high tech business should.