Privatize or modernize? Two views on the future of air traffic control

Chris Edwards: Air traffic control privatization is long overdue

The recent government shutdown disrupted U.S. air traffic control and frustrated millions of passengers, leading to delays and cancellations. Our ATC system is run as a bureaucracy within the Federal Aviation Administration, so it gets caught in the crossfire when the politicians can’t agree on annual budget bills.

Budget squabbles have repeatedly caused ATC disruptions over the years, and airline passengers can expect more trouble ahead as spending battles intensify amid soaring federal deficits.

The solution is straightforward, as dozens of nations have figured out: separate ATC funding from the government budget to insulate it from politics. ATC can be operated as a stand-alone system funded by fees on airlines and private aircraft. It does not need to be subsidized or mis(managed) by politicians.

Canada’s ATC is an excellent model of reform. The country privatized its system in 1996, establishing it as a self-funded nonprofit corporation. “Nav Canada” has become a leader in ATC innovation and has won international awards for its top-class performance. That success has drawn the attention of Congress, and in 2016, the House Transportation Committee passed an FAA restructuring bill based on the Canadian nonprofit model.

Congress should revive this reform plan, which the first Trump administration supported. The advantage would be not just avoiding political disruptions but also fixing years of labor and technology mismanagement by the FAA and Congress.

As one example, shortages of air traffic controllers have been causing flight delays for years. The FAA has not had the hiring flexibility to solve the problem that a private ATC system would. Also, the FAA is micromanaged by Congress, which nixed the creation of an additional training academy for controllers.

As for technology, the FAA has struggled with its “NextGen” modernization effort, according to a recent report by the agency’s inspector general. After two decades, the multi-billion dollar upgrade has achieved only 16 percent of its intended benefits, and “many key programs and capabilities are over budget and delayed until 2030 or beyond.”

The Government Accountability Office has similarly criticized the ATC, warning last year that “urgent FAA actions are needed to modernize aging systems.” The auditors noted that 51 out of 138 computer systems that keep the airspace safe and efficient are “unsustainable.”

Our system is in crisis because ATC is an increasingly high-tech industry that we are trying to run within an old-fashioned bureaucracy. Without significant reforms, rising air travel demand will severely strain the FAA’s out-of-date system in the years ahead.

One big concern is safety. The ATC system is experiencing equipment outages and near-collisions as the skies become more congested. New technologies can solve these problems, but we are falling behind the Canadians and Europeans on advances such as space-based navigation and remote airport towers.

One aviation think tank observed that for “a world leader in so many advanced technologies, the United States’ exposure to ancient moribund ones in the air traffic control sector almost beggars belief.” Indeed, we are in a strange, backward position on ATC, given that the country previously pioneered so many aviation technologies.

Under a reformed U.S. system, ATC operations would be moved to an entrepreneurial private organization like Canada’s, but the FAA would retain oversight of aviation safety. As ATC expert Robert Poole noted, such a separation of operations from oversight is recommended by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

In 2017, Trump said that our ATC system was “stuck, painfully, in the past … ancient, broken, antiquated.” In 2025, that is even more painfully obvious. The federal bureaucracy does not build airplanes; nor should it be guiding them through the skies.

We need an ATC system with stable funding, attracting top talent and pursuing leading-edge innovation. The only way to achieve that is to separate ATC operations from the dysfunctional federal government.

Chris Edwards is the Kilt’s family chair in fiscal studies at the Cato Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.

Ed Bolen: ATC modernization is key to continued U.S. aviation leadership

For the first time in decades, the administration, Congress and the entire aviation industry are united on a detailed and aggressive plan to build a brand-new air traffic control system. In fact, Congress has already approved more than a third of the money necessary to complete the project.

Unfortunately, misguided proponents of privatizing air traffic control have predictably gone into overdrive in trying to distract from this effort to promote their privatization agenda in the U.S. The fact is, privatized ATC systems are not a panacea — they are a problem.

The privatized ATC models in Canada, the EU and elsewhere are beset with a host of well-documented flaws, including delays and disruptions caused by funding and management instability, staffing shortages, safety concerns, technology breakdowns and other serious weaknesses.

Take, for example, Canada’s privatized system, called Nav Canada. A recent report by the International Civil Aviation Organization found that Canada’s safety oversight of Nav Canada has been significantly degraded since the country’s move to privatized ATC, and that the system now ranks below other G7 countries in key aviation safety metrics.

Canadian airline pilots and air traffic controllers have sounded an alarm about Nav Canada’s operations, noting a misplaced focus on “short-term balance sheet wins” at the expense of “a healthy, resilient system with enough people and experience to run it.” Controller shortages have caused travel disruptions at airports in Toronto, Winnipeg and Kelowna — all airports that are smaller and less operationally complex than many of America’s airports.

Or consider the U.K.’s privatized system, NATS, which now ranks among the worst for air traffic control delays. One IT system failure delayed more than 2,000 flights and 700,000 passengers, costing airlines more than $127 million in refunds and compensation, because a key NATS engineer was working from home and struggled to log in remotely. A major airline has included the U.K. in its “league of delays” and blasted it for mismanagement.

Airservices Australia, also a privatized system, has seen a decrease of almost 20 percent of controllers in recent years.

Are we really expected to believe these privatized ATC systems are a model for the U.S. to emulate? Of course, the answer is no. What is needed is not ATC privatization, but real modernization, in the form of a breakthrough plan that Congress and the administration have supported with $12.5 billion in funding approved earlier this year for the first phase of the work.

This plan, spearheaded by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, enjoys unprecedented bipartisan backing in both chambers of Congress and the administration. Equally important, 60 organizations representing the spectrum of the nation’s aviation industry have banded together in a coalition called Modern Skies to support the program.

The results-driven plan invests in people, adding thousands of new air traffic controllers. It invests in facilities, including 15 new towers and 15 co-located TRACONs. The plan will also invest in equipment by rolling out fiber, cellular and satellite communication systems and replacing more than 600 radar and enhanced controller displays.

In short, the plan makes a landmark capital investment that will usher in a new era of air transportation, based on American ingenuity and innovation. It will ensure that America’s aviation system — already the world’s best — remains the global gold standard in the decades to come.

Anything diverting the focus from the critical work to make this plan a reality — particularly calls for emulating troubled ATC models already underperforming in smaller countries with less complex air traffic needs than our own — would be a foolhardy and unnecessary distraction that is bad for American aviation leadership.

Ed Bolen has worked in the U.S. aviation industry for more than 30 years and is president and chief executive officer of the National Business Aviation Association in Washington, D.C. He wrote this for InsideSources.com. Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines.