by
Darryl Phillips
Once upon a time, there was a little company called Carterphone. They made answering machines, or at least they wanted to. (This story has an aviation ending, don't give up yet!)
But the phone company didn't want competition. They didn't want anyone else selling phone equipment. Safety was what they said. (Sound familiar?) If anything was connected to the phone lines it might short out and kill a lineman, was what they said.
Carterphone tried many approaches, but the phone company always fought the idea. And the courts always backed Ma Bell, nobody could argue against safety. Yet Carterphone wouldn't give up. Eventually they made a machine that didn't connect to the circuits at all. It was a mechanical monstrosity that listened for the phone to ring, and physically picked up the receiver. This was before the day of the transistor, it used relays and solenoids and vacuum tubes. Rube Goldberg would have loved it! There was a microphone that listened, a speaker that talked, and a tape recorder that recorded. It did all this without touching the phone company's sacred lines.
Safety, that's what the phone company said when they sued again. But a miracle happened. A judge looked at the Carterphone contraption and said no, this isn't dangerous. It may be clumsy, it may even be laughable. But it isn't going to kill anybody, and it's OK for people to use the machine if they want to.
The rest, as they say, is history. The Carterphone case went all the way to the US Supreme Court and the phone system was changed forever. Safety was defeated! Today we enjoy fax machines and cellular phones and computer modems and call waiting and worldwide dialing and a hundred other services. Some are exasperating "If you wish to press one, press one....If you wish to press two, press two...." Some services, such as 911, save lives every day.
When control was wrested from the giant monopoly, we all gained. And the same would be true if monopolistic power could be wrested from Air Traffic Control. Imagine the competition! One provider might offer you the ability to see traffic on your moving map. Another might offer to compute and use your least-wind-miles routing, so you can arrive at your destination in the quickest time. Another might give you credit if you have to hold. Another might charge more and offer all of the above. And so on. We could enjoy the same sort of competition we now see between long distance providers. It's amazing how many services can be offered when the customer has the option to go elsewhere.
Stuck-in-the-muds argue that ATC is a natural monopoly, that there has to be just one provider. Nonsense. The phone companies interconnect invisibly, power companies share electricity as needed, credit bureaus and other services swap data constantly. Air Traffic Control isn't any different. Today we have a mix of civil ATC and military ATC and non-federal control towers. They work together seamlessly. There is no reason we cannot have much more.
Aviation is at a decision point. Do we go ahead into the next century with the advancements that modern technology offers? Or do we refuse to budge? AOPA, EAA, and the other alphabet organizations argue that we must not change. They want ATC to remain part of FAA. They believe we should continue to do things as they've always been done.
Other voices say ATC should be made into a quasi-government corporation, perhaps like the Post Office. It would still be a single monopoly, but would be "off budget" and funded by the users. This is the plan feared by the lobbyists. The FAA budget, nearly 10,000 millions of dollars a year, is largely consumed by ATC and there is no way to divide that sum by the number of airplanes and come up with a figure we can afford. The lobbyists are right. We would be looking at something like $50,000 a year per plane. That would be the end of General Aviation.
There are three ways to go. One, keep things as they now are, with FAA funded from general revenues plus a little coming from user fees and fuel taxes. Two, put ATC into a Post Office-style corporation, with funding coming from the users. Three, break up the monopoly and let us purchase the services we desire.
I don't understand how anyone could argue for more of the same. In the past three decades aviation has withered away. We're watching the painful and agonizing death of something we love. We are turning out one-twentieth the planes we used to produce. We have fewer pilots each year, and they are getting older. Do we want to continue the policies that caused that? During the past five years the airlines have lost more money than they made since the beginning of aviation. Pan Am is gone. Eastern is gone. Others are gone. As a nation, we cannot continue more of the same.
Something styled after the Post Office might be a little better. Since the postal monopoly was eased, we've seen UPS and FedEx and other carriers prosper and flourish, in the process we've seen the benefits of competition in the postal service as well. Our local Post Office isn't the dour, take-it-or-leave-it place it used to be. They know UPS is across the street.
Unfortunately, the postal service still has a monopoly on first class mail. Postal inspectors have been raiding mail rooms of companies across the land, sometimes levying huge fines when they found items shipped via other carriers that could have been sent first class. And performance of the Amtrak federal corporation isn't encouraging either. A federal corporation probably isn't the best solution.
The third possibility is to break up ATC. Destroy it. Let the Sprints and MCIs and FedExes and UPSs come in and provide services we are willing to pay for.
This is not a struggle between General Aviation and the airlines. Historically we've been on opposite sides of some arguments, but we're together on this one. United Airlines estimates they are losing $600 Million per year due to ATC policies. This includes inefficiencies from altitude restrictions, non-direct routing, flow control, taxi delays, et cetera. It does not include gate capacities, maintenance and other items under control of the company, nor does it include weather. They claim that if all the time spent in these delays was converted to additional flights at their current load average they would see an added $1600 Million before taxes profit. Further, they estimate that all the US airlines added together would total five times that amount. (Thanks to Philip Hodge for providing this information.)
That is 8000 millions of dollars ATC is costing the airlines every year, in addition to the $10,000 million paid by the taxpayers. It is impossible to make accurate estimates of the dollar cost that an inefficient ATC imposes on little airplanes. We know from experience that the costs in time and fuel are substantial, and the hassle factor that causes pilots to give up and buy a boat must be added in somehow. Do we really want to continue doing business this way?
The proposals to reform ATC don't go far enough. Aviation cannot stand more of the same, and we don't need additional layers of sluggish and expensive bureaucracy. What we desperately need is the efficiency that only comes from free competition. We need to be able to look the American taxpayers in the eye and not be ashamed that each airplane is draining $50,000 a year from their pockets.
We've given socialized ATC a long try and it isn't working out. We have witnessed the failures of socialism worldwide. Capitalism is a better idea. Let's try it.
If you don't belong to AOPA or EAA, you should. If you do, you need to tell them how you feel about privatizing ATC. They need to stop spending our dues to assure that we get more of the same.
The First Law of Holes is simple: WHEN YOU'RE IN ONE, STOP DIGGING.