Re: POTUS 45.3 - Bowling Green Massacre Memorial Thread
www.politico.com/story/2017/02/trump-criticize-faa-234849
JFC. If there is one agency I want to stay nationally run, it's the FAA. Could you imagine air traffic not being controlled by the feds, where states or airlines make up their own rules about how air traffic is controlled?
Yes, because the guy running the fry station at McDonald's should run the company.
MNS, any thoughts on this?
Sorry for the delay, actually had to work at work tonight thanks to winter. Cancelled half the operation.
You don't have to imagine it. Anoka/Blaine is a privatized tower. There are several private ATC companies in the US that operate on some smaller airfields that only see a small amount of GA traffic. The FAA has contracted out a few more smaller ones (I think) and all Flight Service Stations to Lockheed Martin. When I started flying (2000) there was at least one FAA Flight Service Station in all 50 states. Now there are three centralized hubs they all work out of. This is as far as it's going to go for the foreseeable future, IMO. With as much as they've already invested in NextGen, ATC will stay with the FAA. NextGen was starting to be implemented when I was at the FAA Academy in OKC and we got a briefing on it. This was in 2012 and we were told the goal was to have it done in 10 years. The system was in desperate need for an overhaul. NextGen is pretty state of the art and is designed to reduce controller workload.
Even if ATC was privatized, the FAA would likely still exist for regulatory and certification purposes. Honestly, the FAA can be a headache, but they are fine as is. If you want to improve air transportation...start with the TSA.
Operating from a position of ignorance here, how would the daily operation of flights change should we take the FAA out of the mix and the various airports or states take over control of their flight control systems? As a flight crosses the country, one FAA operator has to hand off the tracking of a plane to the next operator in the flight path. Would that change? We have thousands of similar handoffs currently between US flight controllers and foreign flight controllers happening daily without incident.
The only real change to the daily operation of flights would be the aircraft operator would receive a bill from company in charge (which I am sure will be passed on to the passengers). NavCanada is a private ATC company that handles all air traffic in Canada except a small part of southern Ontario around DTW which is controlled by Cleveland Center. Handoff procedures and coordination between US facilities and Canadian facilities are all detailed with letters of agreement, just like they are between two US facilities.
Our national airspace system and ATC are the platinum standard. Oakland Center has the single largest sector in the world (ZOA Oceanic...the Pacific Ocean). ATL handles more operations a day than most of Europe, IIRC. And the best part of it is, it's free to use. It should stay that way. If he really wants to do something to help the airlines....1) DON'T FLY AF1 INTO OUR HUBS* (wishful thinking) and 2) #DenyNAI
*"[Obama]'s going to make a Republican out of me yet!" - my Bernie supporting coworker during a particularly bad VIP movement event in ORD last year
