Members of Congress must decide to take the initiative and fix the nation’s outdated aviation infrastructure or vote to support the status quo, says Chris Ward, senior vice president and chief executive of the New York metro area at AECOM, a global engineering and construction firm.
“Today, the level of frustration has galvanized the aviation industry’s push to see modernization because something has to be done,” Ward told Transportation Today.
As a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the bi-state agency that operates the New York City metropolitan region’s major airports, Ward said outdated technology ended up costing taxpayers $25 billion in longer flights and more unnecessary delays during 2016.
Congress is now grappling with how best to fix the aviation system. Both the U.S. House and Senate are poised to take floor action on separate proposals that would reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which has a looming Sept. 30 deadline.
The House’s 21st Century AIRR (Aviation Innovation, Reform, and Reauthorization) Act, H.R. 2997, would transfer air traffic control (ATC) operations currently overseen by the FAA into a private, separate, not-for-profit corporation, reauthorize FAA funding and other programs, and seek to upgrade the ATC system.
The Senate’s 2017 Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, S. 1405, generally would reauthorize the FAA for four years and expand oversight of its NextGen technology upgrade program. But the bill doesn’t support the ATC-FAA spin-off plan — despite President Donald Trump’s support for the idea.
However, the spin-off idea contained in H.R. 2997 is one that Ward said is supported by the advocacy group, New Yorkers for On Time Flights, which is part of Citizens for On Time Flights, the grassroots program facilitated by Airlines for America (AFA). The AFA is the industry trade group representing the leading U.S. commercial airlines, including Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest, United, UPS, FedEx and many others.
The group favors a federally chartered, non-profit organization set up to oversee the nation’s ATC system, not privatization as it is typically construed to mean a for-profit enterprise, according to its website.
Specifically, members call for separating the FAA’s Aviation Safety organization, which is responsible for oversight of the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization — a structure the group says essentially puts the FAA in the position of overseeing itself in an inherent conflict of interest. “ATC service provision from ATC safety oversight is an international best practice that could enhance safety by providing truly independent oversight,” the group says.
The group also says that under its proposal, fees would be set based on the costs to operate, maintain and improve the ATC system and any revenues exceeding costs would stay within the ATC system.
New Yorkers for On Time Flights, which joins chapters in Florida, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, South Dakota and Washington, thinks these ideas are particularly important for the New York metropolitan area.
Last year, there were almost 33 million domestic origin and destination passengers who came to and left from the three major New York area airports — LaGuardia Airport, John F. Kennedy International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport, said Ward.
Nearly 60 percent of the total delays these passengers endured resulted from the currently inefficient ATC system, he said.
And despite being tasked with overseeing an ATC system upgrade for more than three decades, the FAA hasn’t been able to make it happen, Ward added, largely because the FAA isn’t staffed nor organized to manage sophisticated software platforms.
“No region is more at the mercy of this impending disaster than the New York metro area,” the nation’s single largest aviation market, Ward wrote in a May 25 New York Daily News op-ed.
The Global Gateway Alliance says the outdated and inefficient ATC system is choking air travel in and out of the New York metro area, which welcomes more than 100 million passengers a year. It says the system can’t handle the traffic, resulting in congestion and delays.
If something isn’t done, Ward said, New York and New Jersey will need to construct another major runway to be able to carry increased travel traffic. “And that’s a 15- to 20-year process, which is a conservative estimate,” he said.
At the same time, Ward said the existing situation isn’t the FAA’s fault because any entity — public or private — needs certainty before it begins a major upgrade project. And the way congressional budgets are set, coupled with partisan politics, that certainty has essentially been erased for the FAA.
However, not all New York lawmakers agree that privatizing the nation’s air traffic control system would improve American aviation. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said that creating a private, not-for-profit ATC corporation could hurt consumers by giving the airlines more control and providing them with more leverage to increase airfares.
Other New York Democrats, including U.S. Reps. Kathleen Rice and Gregory Meeks, did not respond to requests for comment.
Meanwhile, calling America’s ATC system “hopelessly antiquated,” Ward wrote in his op-ed that the nation doesn’t “expect our pilots to use folding maps in the skies, so why do our air traffic controllers still use paper flight strips? This cannot endure.”
But we know how to fix it, he added. The technology exists, we just need the political might to get behind it and deploy it. H.R. 2997 is the vehicle to get the nation moving toward that goal because it would spin off ATC operations from the FAA — thereby deleting any congressional budget impasses — modernize the ATC system, keep down costs, reduce delays and enhance safety, Ward said.
“We are between the classic rock and a hard place,” said Ward. “It’s time for Congress to make a change.”
As of Aug. 30, Citizens for On Time Flights reported that more than 102,000 consumers have used the “take action” tool on ontimeflights.org to write their representatives and senators, and they have sent more than 256,000 messages to members of Congress advocating for ATC modernization.
“We cannot continue to run the air traffic control system the same way it has been since the 1950s and expect different results,” says New Yorkers for On Time Flights.