by
Darryl Phillips
It's the sixth of June as I write this. TV is calling it D-Day plus 50. Newspapers, magazines and airwaves are filled with stories of the brave young men who fought for our freedom.
How should we explain to those dead boys what we've done with their hard-fought freedom? How should we tell them, for example, about Bob Hoover's battle with the system? And the untold thousands of others who are fighting and losing similar battles. The others don't have the name recognition of Bob Hoover, so we don't see their stories in the paper. But they have names, they love flying, their rights and freedoms are being trampled just as much as Bob's.
Freedom is not won or lost on the beaches of Normandy. It is won or lost in the bureaucratic mazes of federal agencies. It is won or lost in the halls of congress. It is won or lost wherever and whenever we let it slip away. The fight for freedom is not waged with F-16s or Tomahawk missiles, it takes letters and phone calls to Washington. A lot of them. It takes personal contact with our Congresspeople when they come to town. It takes keeping ourselves informed on the issues. How would we explain our cavalier attitude to some boy, in the surf at Normandy, as he stumbles under the weight of his hundred-pound backpack and drowns in the quest for freedom?
By the time these words appear in print, the deadline will have passed for pilots to comment on the proposal to reduce our flying freedoms again, this time in restrictions from flying over National Parks. We stand to lose another 73,000,000 acres, about 114,000 square miles. This is equivalent to being denied the freedom to fly in all of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York (the whole state, not just the city), New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. With enough left over to also prohibit flight near Seattle, Tacoma, and San Francisco.
Did you comment on that NPRM? Fifty years ago boys were dying for our freedom. Did you care enough about freedom to sit down and write a letter?
The National Park Service thinks airplanes make too much noise. Perhaps they are right, I can understand that families on vacation don't want more of the same noise they fled from. But the FAA is supposed to be on our side. This should have been a battle between those who are paid to protect the parks, and those who are paid to protect aviation. And may the best bureaucrats win.
But no, FAA JOINED in the proposed rulemaking. They said "Wow, here's another way to restrict aviation freedom. Golly, let's do it!"
In all fairness, there is some good news. It looks like we're finally rid of the Microwave Landing System. Twenty-seven years in gestation. Nobody wanted it, not general aviation, not the airlines, not even the military. But there was Research and Development happening in some key congressional districts. For twenty-seven years. At last, MLS is dead.
Likewise with parts of the Advanced Automation Plan. Technology moves fast and is moving faster, bureaucracy moves slow and is grinding ever more slowly. They don't match. No electronic system conceived in the 1960s makes any sense today. In every TRACON and Center in this country, the most powerful computer in the whole building is the laptop some off-duty controller brought in to play Flight Simulator. We have to do something to improve that.
So FAA Administrator David Hinson killed parts (at least) of the plan. Good for him. I don't often have a reason to say thank you to the FAA. But this is such a time. Thank You, Mr. Hinson, for killing MLS. It survived Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush. During the Clinton administration it was finally destroyed. And good riddance.
But cancelling stupid obsolete programs is only a beginning. It takes positive action, too. Can the government do that? There isn't much evidence that government can equal the accomplishments of private enterprise.
Which brings us, once again, to the subject of ATC Inc. This one is going to be with us for awhile, and if we're to retain and regain our freedoms it's important that each pilot have an opinion. Form your own opinion. Discuss the future of aviation with your fellow pilots. You don't need the opinion of some newspaper columnist, or some association president. Based on your experience as a pilot, you can determine what aviation needs to survive and grow. More of the same? Something different? What? Flood your legislators with your opinion. To keep the faith with those who gave their lives for this form of governing, you cannot do less.
One theme that has run thru most of the letters I've received about ATC Inc is the misunderstanding that I'm on the side of the government corporation proposed by Clinton and Gore. Nothing could be further from the truth.
But I'm not in favor of keeping more of the same, either.
Like the pent-up stresses before an earthquake, forces are growing to change the way we control airplanes. This force can be ignored but cannot be denied.
Or, visualize a slingshot, with the rubber being pulled tighter and tighter. As the force for change grows, aviation digs in harder and harder to resist, to maintain the status quo. The force builds more. Eventually something is going to give. Our attention should concentrate on the best way to USE this force, not how to RESIST it. We don't want ATC Inc. But we don't want aviation to continue to die either. We need to decide where we want to end up when this rubber band finally snaps.
Yet EAA, AOPA, all the other A's simply continue to resist. And they build more museums. Monuments to the past rather than plans for the future.
The collision avoidance group I've been a part of for the past two years has been an education for me. Even knowing the shallowness of the bureaucratic mind, I thought at some level there would be people who understood and appreciated the need to keep planes from bumping into each other. But they have a greater need to prolong and expand Air Traffic Control. Keeping controllers in the loop is more important than aviation efficiency, more important than safety. Any hint of planes being able to avoid each other without a controller's help makes their blood boil.
BRS fought the same battle on their aircraft-lowering parachutes. Although this is a wonderful last-ditch solution to everything from pilot incapacitation to midair collision to engine failure over the mountains at night, it was (and is) resisted by the FAA. Is FAA benefitting society here? Probably most pilots would agree that no government should require us to install or (heaven forbid) use that parachute. But should FAA restrict our freedom to invest in safety if we desire?
I hear from FSS people who tell of severe weather bulletins that have been retyped as many as seven times from one system to another because the equipment is not compatible, and arriving 12 or 14 hours after the fact. Should we simply accept this? And should society continue to pay for it? I think not.
The status quo is killing aviation. We don't need more of the same. Nor do we need another bureaucracy. We need a third choice, the choice to purchase whatever aviation services we require. Let the airlines purchase lots of services if they prefer. Let the rest of us purchase only a few. Or none. Let private enterprise provide it, just like the grocery store. Gourmet section, or generic aisle? Suit yourself. That's freedom.
The force to revolutionize the way we control and regulate aircraft increases. When the fault ruptures, when the rubber band snaps, when the change inevitably occurs, where do you want aviation to end up?