President's Position

A new year normally gets off to a sluggish start, especially the first week. Not so 1994.

It was the first Thursday of the year in what had been an active first week. So active, in fact, that most of your AOPA managers, including myself, found themselves covering separate meetings at various agencies and businesses involving aviation. It was at the end of a very long day for all of us that AOPA's senior vice president for Government and Technical Affairs, Steven J. Brown, walked into my office, and, looking rather haggard, proclaimed, "Today was not a good day for general aviation." He had just spent eight hours in Washington, D.C., at the FAA and the Department of Transportation. The purpose: to be briefed, along with representatives of other aviation groups, including the airlines, on the Clinton Administration's response to the Airline Commission Recommendations. You may recall that right after the new President's inauguration, he responded to a financially troubled airline industry by appointing a panel of key aviation executives to recommend paths to a brighter future. Almost all of them came from the airline community, and their 61 recommendations were forwarded to the White House during the summer.

Brown sank into a chair across from my desk and handed me a couple of dozen pages stapled together, with a title page showing jetliners circling a world globe. The document was titled "The Clinton Administration's Initiative to Promote a Strong Competitive Aviation Industry." The report was released by Transportation Secretary Federico Pena, and Steve had spent most of the day listening to a justification of the recommendations from the White House.

The Clinton/Pena "Initiative" contained three policy decisions that have a direct impact on general aviation. Two of the three are contrary to any reasonable reform that would benefit you as a general aviation aircraft owner or pilot. They would raise costs substantially for us and even accelerate the decline of the lightplane industry.

First, the Administration proposed the corporatization of the FAA's air traffic control functions, with a commitment to submit in April legislation to Congress that would advocate the change. Second, the Administration referred any decisions on the merits of product liability reform and pending statute of repose legislation to the Justice Department for long-term, government-wide study and analysis. This means no support for reform from the President or Pena in the foreseeable future. The only bit of good news was the third initiative applicable to general aviation: a decision to accelerate the FAA's programs to implement GPS navigation in the United States.

After only one year on the job, Clinton and Pena have begun to behave like "Washington insiders." Too often, when encountering a large, complex, and seemingly intractable problem like the modernization of air traffic control, the quick political answer is to reorganize and give the appearance of change or improvement. As the airlines have clamored for a response to the commission recommendations, and as the FAA's modernization programs continue to fall further behind schedule and exceed budgets, the Administration apparently is taking the classic approach of doing something even if it's wrong.

The fact is that the operation and management of the FAA should be improved, and it could be done within government more productively than creating a new corporation with all the cost and organizational disadvantages it would have.

The U.S. ATC system is the safest and most efficient in the world. It moves half of all the global traffic by processing nearly 21,000 services and 5,000 aircraft every hour of every day. Our system provides this capability at half the cost of services in Europe. Proponents of a privatized system point to the success it has had in foreign countries. The U.S. ATC system is not even remotely comparable to the privatized ATC systems in New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany, or other small nations. Of the busiest 20 airports in the world, 19 are in the United States and number 20, London Heathrow, is considered by many to be exceptionally complex from an ATC perspective.

Administration proponents of an ATC corporation know that costs would rise in a privatized structure, as is the case everywhere in the world where conversion to a private system has occurred. The controllers' union favors the proposal because their pay would likely increase, and their ability to negotiate work rules and the right to strike would be advantageous. It's common sense that the cost of business will increase as the corporation pays interest on its loans, taxes, and liability insurance premiums, which the FAA does not now have to expense.

The Administration wants each of us to accept a "future promise" of a more efficient and productive FAA in return for an immediate increase in the taxes and fees we pay and the risk that safety, as well as ATC operation, could deteriorate as a huge and unnecessary reorganization takes place. It would be far more productive to have everyone at the FAA working to improve the management and performance of the FAA and its ATC system, rather than worrying about whether there will be a job for them at ATC, Incorporated.

As I stated in " President's Position: Air Traffic Control, Incorporated?" (November 1993 Pilot), air traffic control is a natural monopoly, and the only way to protect the public interest is to maintain it as a government function with broad, informed oversight. This requires the active involvement of Congress and the system's customers. As members of AOPA, and as airline passengers when we have to ride the silver tubes, do we want a board of directors that primarily represents the airlines governing our air transportation system? That would be equivalent to privatizing our roads and highways, then turning the control over to the truckers. Where does that leave the majority of users with automobiles? I maintain that we already have our board of directors: Congress. It's part of the present governing system of the FAA, and we should be working with them to improve the agency, not reorganize it.

The White House position on product liability reform is no surprise, but it clearly demonstrates how the trial lawyers have influenced the new Administration. However, our hard work on your behalf has achieved a statute of repose bill in both the House and Senate, with the entire second half of the 103rd Congress to work the issues. With your support, proponents of needed tort reform stand an excellent chance to make headway in 1994, regardless of the White House's timidity. It just makes it a tougher battle, but no one said this job would be easy.

After discussing this bad news, Brown and I left the office. We weren't pleased, but at least we know where the Administration stands — for now. We also know that unless it is willing to take a more realistic look at general aviation, we will be countering each of its actions affecting our future. "Black Thursday" is already just another day in the past, but one that left us with an uphill battle. With your active support, we can build enough momentum to overcome these misguided 1994 Administration proposals, just as we did in 1993.