Ten days from now, FAA’s current authorization will end. Reauthorization has been ongoing at Congress all of this year. One party rules the House, and they came up with a Reauthorization bill that reads like a Christmas List for general aviation; the other party rules the Senate, and is still not finished with their version. It looks like we are heading for a showdown, and likely an extension or two. If past repeats, we may also see controllers staying at home, but getting paid for that added time-off when all the dust eventually settles.
Watching how poorly the parties function in Congress, and also how poorly our mainstream media fails us by not diving into the details (instead, just repeating past stories and reprinting press releases from FAA, NATCA, A4A, AOPA, etc.), it is easy to start to hunt for more info on the internet. The internet is filled with articles, FAA reports, GAO Testimonies, Congressional hearing transcripts, and much, much more. It is educational, but it is also depressing, seeing how themes and strategies repeat, and then they repeat again.
FAA loves to go to Congress and ask for more money, and commonly they do so by pulling big numbers out of (somewhere) and proclaiming the skies will fall if we do not spend a lot more: hire more controllers, build more runways, fork out billions for ‘capacity enhancement’ technologies like NextGen. But it has become much more sophisticated. All of the key players are constantly ‘co-lobbying’ (although FAA fondly calls it ‘collaborating’) with one another, fusing their advocacies to guide us toward even more waste. Their nests get feathered, despite the fact that FAA is doing a lot less while also using a LOT more automation. It is a racket, and this Post provides some insight into the racketeering co-lobbyists.
Click on this link to download the 4-pg PDF, for viewing offline, and feel free to share it onward.
Use the embedded PDF below to read the PDF online; dwell on the bottom left corner of the PDF to use up-down arrows (for page scrolling) or to zoom in/out.
20230920.. An FAA Forecast, Actual Ops Trends, and do We Need More ATCs (4p)
