Flying Too High

Washington Monthly, Oct, 2000 by Stephen Pomper

"If I recall correctly," says Phil Boyer with some self-satisfaction, "this was the first year that the administration acknowledged that they will exempt general aviation from the fuel tax." Boyer explains that this position was only arrived at through persistent "education" But does he mean education or being beaten into submission? Boyer leans forward conspiratorially: "I was trying to use a kinder word," he says, laughing a bit theatrically. "But they are both synonymous."

What's Really at Stake

But even though GA's free ride has been secured for the time being, AOPA has its work cut out for it. As this Summer of Hell travel season drew to a close, it was becoming abundantly clear to many Americans that whatever system we have for regulating the nations sky ways simply does not keep the traffic moving fast enough. (Delays have increased by 50 percent over the last five years; cancellations are up by 130 percent.) What AOPA fears is not so much the congestion, but one of the possible solutions that has been bandied about, urged forward by the Clinton administration, and adopted by more than 20 other countries (such as the U.K., New Zealand, and Germany) already. It is a solution that makes GA's blood run cold. It is called corporatization.

The idea behind corporatization is this: The FAA has more responsibility than it can handle, and air-traffic control is an operational system that should be run like a business, not like a bureaucracy. By spinning off these operations into a quasi-public entity that would be controlled by a board comprising representatives of the major aviation stakeholders--including the major airlines and general aviation--corporatization's advocates claim that the system could be made to run more nimbly and efficiently. Congress has never quite fallen in love with the idea, in part because of the (quite legitimate) concern that a corporatized entity controlled in part by the airlines might be tempted to maximize profits at the expense of safety, and in part--one suspects-because Congress likes the level of influence it currently wields over airline regulation.

Neither, for that matter, does AOPA. AOPA has plenty of friends in Congress, and it would like to see them keep a firm hand on the air-traffic-control system. AOPA does not have a lot of friends in the commercial airline industry, and the idea of jockeying for position with them on the board of a corporatized entity is enough to drain the blood from a lobbyist's face. "We have a national air transportation system," says Boyer with some indignation. "It isn't a private company and I hope it never becomes a private company."

But wait: Isn't the world of general aviation peopled by staunchly libertarian captains of industry who, in the ordinary course, have great faith in the capabilities of the private sector? Well, yes, but this is different. Not only would a corporatized entity mean potentially less control for AOPA, it could be the first step down the road toward--gasp--user fees. Before you know it, general aviation might actually be paying its fair share of the air traffic control structure's operating costs.