But let’s focus on the more substantive issue of how to maximize safety and minimize costs.
If those are the two main criteria, the answer is privatization.
Indeed, this is a great opportunity for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency if it wants to show how to save money and make things work better.
The above video has some of the details, but let’s also look at an article in City Journal by John Tierney.
Here are some excerpts.
America’s air-traffic control system, once the world’s most advanced, has become an international disgrace. …chronic mismanagement…has left the system with too few controllers using absurdly antiquated technology. The problems were obvious 20 years ago, when I visited control towers in both Canada and the United States. The Canadians sat in front of sleek computer screens that instantly handled tasks like transferring the oversight of a plane from one controller to another. The Americans were still using pieces of paper called flight strips. …It was bad enough to see such outdated technology in 2005. But they’re still using those paper flight strips in American towers… The basic problem, which reformers have been trying to remedy since the Clinton administration, is that the system is operated by a cumbersome federal bureaucracy. …after the Washington collision, could the second Trump administration and a new Republican Congress finally create a state-of-the-art system? …Experience in Canada and other countries shows that an independent corporation, able to issue its own revenue bonds because it’s funded directly by user fees instead of taxes, can modernize air-traffic control far more efficiently and cheaply than a government agency.
In an article for Discourse, Gary Leff adds his analysis.
…after 1978…the federal government no longer told airlines where they’re allowed to fly, and how much they can charge. …However, nearly every other element of the experience continues to be dictated—and even directly managed—by the government. …Elsewhere in the world you’ll find nonprofit organizations conducting air traffic control, with better technology to direct planes more effectively and efficiently. …The private nonprofit NavCanada (which rolled out electronic flight strips way back in 2002!) oversees not just Canadian airspace but also the North Atlantic. It operates much more cost efficiently than the FAA. And they’re way ahead technologically as well.
Leff’s article cites other policies that would improve air travel, so privatizing air traffic control is just one piece of the puzzle.
But it’s an important piece, so let’s wrap up our discussion with some passages from Dominic Pino’s column in National Review.
Get the federal government out of air traffic control. I’d call it “privatizing,” but if you want to call it “depoliticizing” air traffic control, that’s fine by me. The air traffic control system should not be affected in the slightest by which politicians are in power… Air traffic control is not a public good in economic theory. It’s a club good, which means it can be provided privately through a system of user fees. …Canada illustrates that the private alternative works: Canadian air traffic control has been provided by a nonprofit since 1996, at zero cost to Canadian taxpayers. …Privatization has been proposed for the U.S. on and off since the 1980s, so DOT doesn’t need to come up with any groundbreaking ideas or ask for more money from Congress.
Amen.
By the way, if you’re not familiar with the concept of “public goods,” click here. Pino is right. Air traffic control does not qualify.
There is no logical reason why we don’t learn from other countries and get politicians and bureaucrats out of this line of business.
P.S. Where we’re on the topic of airlines, click here and here to learn why we should blame government when passengers get hit with so-called junk fees. Leads me to wonder whether the annoying “resort fees” at hotels also are consequence of government interference.
P.P.S. Eight years ago, I shared a very amusing British video that mocked the notion of privatizing the air traffic control system. Since the video is very clever, folks on the left doubtlessly were amused. But folks on the right got the last laugh since the British system is now privatized and working very well.
Dan Mitchell is co-founder of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity and Chairman of the Board. He is an expert in international tax competition and supply-side tax policy.
