AOPA President Phil Boyer now serves more than 400,000 members of AOPA.
Several AOPA members have been asking about mixed messages they have been getting through TV ads, fliers at aviation events, posters, and conversations regarding your association's position on the current FAA reauthorization legislation working its way through Congress. The claim is that AOPA is supporting a bill that allows user fees and privatization of the air traffic system. Ironically, in survey after survey, members have indicated to AOPA that "user fees" (a per-use charge to utilize ATC services) is their number-one concern. Like the average member, there is nothing that concerns me more. If anybody tries to tell you that AOPA or Phil Boyer supports privatizing ATC, you tell them that's a lie. AOPA is adamantly opposed to any effort to privatize air traffic control or charge user fees for safety services. AOPA will continue to fight attempts to take the responsibility for aircraft separation and control away from the federal government.
The TV ads and postcard campaigns are the efforts of labor unions representing FAA employees. You have to understand their motivation. Their priority is to protect the jobs and work rules of the federal employees who voted for them. Let me emphasize that AOPA certainly has no gripe with the hard-working controllers who supply needed services to aviation.
Almost a year ago, the current administration changed the classification of air traffic services from "inherently governmental" to "commercial," meaning ATC services could theoretically be done by a contractor. Going into this session of Congress all of us concerned with privatization (unions and AOPA) worked to include language in pending bills to reinstate the "inherently governmental" concept.
However, unlike the labor unions, AOPA's priority is to protect general aviation. That's why when push came to shove, we decided to support the House version of the FAA reauthorization bill (H.R.2115). Labor unions would make you think that the bill would privatize all of ATC. But the bill actually prohibits transferring ATC out of the government for at least four years. No, it doesn't eliminate the possibility for the future, but no bill can do that. It protects us for the length of the bill — better than what we have right now!
At the crux of the union criticism are two or three very core issues. Part of the bill directs the FAA to look at some 69 control towers and consider whether any of them should be staffed with contract employees. Many AOPA members already use contract towers at smaller airports, some high-use GA airports, and joint-use civilian-military fields. The military employs contract controllers at many of its airfields. Most AOPA members report that they are pleased with contract tower service. These towers are less expensive for the taxpayer as well. With the contract tower program in existence for two decades, isn't it obvious the union issue is jobs, not the efficiency of outsourcing lower-use facilities? And the FAA has told Congress before that it wouldn't contract busier or IFR towers.
Very closely tied to general aviation are flight service stations. The union representing these dedicated and hard-working controllers sees the current bill as a means to scare those of us who support their work into thinking that flight service stations could be privatized and user fees would be charged. As I have mentioned in a previous column (see " President's Position: FSS," June Pilot), a study called an A-76 is currently looking at the possibility of outsourcing flight service work to address the antiquated technology, cost structure, customer service, and other aspects of this safety-critical mission. No decisions have yet been made, and AOPA is monitoring the process very closely to ensure pilots are the winners in the final decision. Most important, we have also maintained that whether or not the service remains in government, that it be paid for with FAA funds, not by users. We cannot continue to bury our heads in the sand and ignore that the government is currently spending 10 times the amount that avgas taxes collect on flight service stations. They must be modernized and made more efficient, or user fees could be implemented.
The bill AOPA supports makes it clear that any outsourced functions cannot be "core" air traffic control functions. But how about cutting the grass at FAA facilities, security services, and maintenance?
The bill does a lot for general aviation. It adds new protections from the pilot insecurity rules (the Transportation Security Administration itself handling the appeal from a pilot certificate revocation); it provides $14.2 billion over four years for improving airports, some of it for GA airports; it will force the government to reexamine and justify airspace restrictions like the Washington ADIZ or the "Mickey Mouse TFRs"; and it adds new penalties to prevent another airport closing like Meigs Field — just to name a few. Those things aren't high on a union boss's priority list, but they're very important to all of us as general aviation pilots.
Yes, I am disappointed that the bill stops short of declaring ATC "inherently governmental." This means the issue of privatizing air traffic control will continue to be a distraction for government policy makers and the aviation community. However, if the House bill doesn't pass, the president has made it very clear he will veto the alternative. Then what are we left with? Status quo is not an option. Yes, it's a tough decision, but as a pilot and your AOPA president, it means ATC is protected for four years, and that gives us four more years to work with Congress on strengthening and extending that protection.
Related Articles
