Thursday, April 21, 2011

What's the Problem with the FAA? The FAA

Conducting investigations! Changing procedures! You go, guy. Compare that sort of constipatory bureaucratese with how Southwest Airlines (arguably the safest airline flying domestically in the U.S.) responsed when one of its fleet went kerflooey earlier this month: Southwest promptly grounded its entire operation and did checks of everything. They were back up in the air quickly, with minimal (though not zero) disruption to travelers and its reputation.
Of course, LaHood is much more interested in touting bull-dinky new laws about luggage fees and tarmac waiting times, where the government can squeeze the airlines on behalf of flyers. Oddly, LaHood seems to have no good ideas about reforming the air traffic control system (ATC) which the government fully controls and is one of the major reasons for tarmac waits.
Like too many of not just Obama's cabinet but every president's cabinet, LaHood seems blissfully uninterested in actually making things under his purview better. Rather, he spends most of his time going from cover-your-ass mode to laying on new fines and regs to anyone he can. The deregulation of air travel back under St. Jimmy of Plains and a bunch of other Dems (including Ted Kennedy!) is one of the great unalloyed success stories of the past 40 years. Thanks to the end of really idiotic top-down control dictating where airlines could fly, how much they could charge, and even what sort of food they served, air travel is cheaper and safer than ever.
http://reason.com/blog/2011/04/21/forget-big-old-jet-airliners-i

The only way to get the politics out of our air traffic system is to take the system away from the politicians. Why not let a private corporation manage the skies?
That may sound like a far-out, free-market idea, but Canada doesn't think so.
Our neighbors to the north often take pride in their lavish government programs, yet they allow a private corporation called Nav Canada to manage their air-traffic control system. Canada's approach, often called commercialization, has some surprising supporters in the U.S., including Al Gore, who pushed for commercialization when he was Bill Clinton's vice president.

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