First, AOPA member surveys indicate that all of you travel heavily on the airlines. Actually, an AOPA member makes greater use of the airlines than a nonpilot. But equally important is the fact that when the airlines are happy, GA is happy. When the airlines have problems, they tend to blame them on small planes; we hear talk of peak-hour pricing at airports, or all-out bans on GA at some facilities. In addition, the public's growing concern about these delays has been either been purposely or innocently misdirected by the air carriers to our air traffic system — to take the heat off their scheduling practices, the hub-and-spoke system, and what deregulation has done to the capacity of our airports.
Flying back from the New England area one beautiful VFR night about two months ago, I heard ATC giving up to 45-minute holds to airliners going into New York's La Guardia Airport (LGA). Finally, one captain asked why, and the controller responded: "saturation" at LGA. Too many flights were scheduled at the same time into an airport with limited runway capacity. Most likely, however, the crews on the dozen or so airliners placed into holds came on the cabin PA systems and blamed it on "air traffic." Disgruntled passengers like simple answers and a single scapegoat. But it's time to take the heat off what most of us acknowledge is the world's finest air traffic control system, and it's also time to quit bellyaching about the need to privatize it and move to a user-fee revenue stream. General aviation loses under both scenarios, so we do have a stake in moving to solve these problems, and it won't be an overnight fix.
According to both the FAA and the Mitre Corporation, improvements in air traffic control will bring at best a 5- to 15-percent enhancement to ATC system capacity. By contrast, one runway added to an airport can increase its capacity between 40 and 80 percent! Adding one runway to Atlanta Hartsfield, Chicago O'Hare, or Miami International would bring about a tremendous reduction of the congestion currently clogging the system.
In the coming weeks, as I visit key congressmen involved in aviation matters, I'll be stressing some of the legislation and recommendations that Congress has already put into place — many of the pieces necessary to reform the FAA. In the early 1990s the FAA claimed that it could not move fast enough in hiring the right people or buying state-of-the-art technology. With your support through a letter-writing campaign, in 1996 Congress granted the agency significant exemptions from federal procurement and personnel rules to help ease the process of updating aging equipment and retaining key employees. We saw a revolving door to the administrator's office, with no one staying long enough to really make a difference. AOPA Legislative Affairs supported Congress in establishing a five-year fixed term to transcend the changes in party politics. Our present administrator, Jane Garvey, appointed by a Democratic president, anticipates serving her full term ending in August 2002 — under President Bush, a Republican.
AOPA and the industry supported the establishment of an FAA cost accounting system that is just showing promise in determining where investments for capacity improvement should be made. Thanks to AIR-21, the bill last year that "unlocked" the aviation trust fund, agency spending is more closely aligned with its revenues. A 1994 AOPA suggestion, passed by Congress in 1996 and finally implemented last year, sought public-sector management expertise to provide advice and counsel to the FAA administrator. The Management Advisory Council and an air traffic control subcommittee have been established, and meetings are just beginning for both groups.
To further reform the air traffic control system, the FAA was even given an ATC chief operating officer to oversee day-to-day operations. This job is currently being filled.
And when it comes to funding, the entire aviation community — airlines, airports, and general aviation — supported the passage of AIR-21. This bill, if allowed to work, will provide almost $3 billion more each year to address the needs of the air transportation system.
Quite simply, we have to give the management reforms and funding increases of the 1990s a chance to work. Leaders from all parts of the aviation industry must put aside their differences and unite behind plans to fully realize the potential of the tools given to us by Congress. It would be a mistake to reverse the years of hard work that were needed to reach this point by suddenly adopting a knee-jerk reaction to airline delays.
However, making all of this happen will not be easy. As the new Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta said in his confirmation hearing before the Senate, things "are going to get worse before they get better." But we just can't keep throwing rocks at each other. We are going to have to find ways to speed up the process.
AOPA believes in that mandate, with the past decade being evidence of the association's role in trying to provide tools and resources to improve the nation's airport and airway system. Our job this year is to not allow talk of user fees or privatizing ATC to undo all that we have worked for, or let our opponents implement a risky scheme that no one is sure will really change anything. When all is said and done, if we are going to solve the air travel dilemma, we must allow the reforms put in place over the past five years to work — and we must get the traveling public to understand, "It's more runways, stupid!"
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