ATC Privatization

Art VanDelay said:
They're not concerned with fixing it - just doing it cheaper and privatization definitely does that. We live in a world where cheap seems to always win.
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Actually private raises costs. The only way it reduces cost is by eliminating scope or requirements. Plenty of studies back this up.
As much as I may laugh at federal employees, as a former beltway bandit (federal consutant) I know it well. The reality is privaye sector to do the same job for the same requirements will cost more. It will generally be done faster, but it costs more.

Tim

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Art VanDelay said:
It sounds likely you don't fly the same IFR routings that I do. Tell me where most of your IFR flights are from and to ?
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East coast. I trained out of KGAI inside the SFRA, now live outside Boston, only VFR flights are training flights. Otherwise in the system.

Tim

Sent from my LG-H631 using Tapatalk
 
tspear said:
Actually private raises costs. The only way it reduces cost is by eliminating scope or requirements. Plenty of studies back this up.
As much as I may laugh at federal employees, as a former beltway bandit (federal consutant) I know it well. The reality is privaye sector to do the same job for the same requirements will cost more. It will generally be done faster, but it costs more.

Tim

Sent from my LG-H631 using Tapatalk
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Privatization costs more than the federal government ????? You're going to have to show me that.
 
tspear said:
Frequencies nor transponders or ATC are the limit. Runways and weather are the limits. Additional frequenct standards have already been agreed too under ICAO. Currently FAA has said the cost and requirements do not require such a change. In addition ACARS and other systems are available tp reduce radio congestion if SWA was willing to pay for the system....

Otherwise, show me where ATC is truly limited and the shortage is not the runways.

Tim

Sent from my LG-H631 using Tapatalk
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Tim,
You're obviously not a very sophisticated IFR pilot if you truly believe that ATC does not become limited. Here's a little assignment for you - at KEWR there is a frequency (132.45) specifically labeled "Gate Hold", what might the purpose of that frequency be ?
 
Art VanDelay said:
Tim,
You're obviously not a very sophisticated IFR pilot if you truly believe that ATC does not become limited. Here's a little assignment for you - at KEWR there is a frequency (132.45) specifically labeled "Gate Hold", what might the purpose of that frequency be ?
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Your inability to depart EWR isn't because ATC is limited. That's a ridiculous thought. The limitations at EWR are physical limitations. There aren't enough runways nor physical airspace to handle the volume of traffic that goes in and out of such a small geographic area.

I don't care if you put a private industry guy behind the scope or a federal one. There isn't **** that can be done if you load way too many flights into too small of airspace at airports with too few of runways. You exceed a physical limitation.

EWR delays can be resolved by making the appropriate physical changes or reducing the number of operations.

The NYC airports are all running more operations then they were physically designed for. The result - delays - and the need for your gate hold frequency.
 
tspear said:
Actually private raises costs. The only way it reduces cost is by eliminating scope or requirements. Plenty of studies back this up.
As much as I may laugh at federal employees, as a former beltway bandit (federal consutant) I know it well. The reality is privaye sector to do the same job for the same requirements will cost more. It will generally be done faster, but it costs more.

Tim
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If you know it as well as you state you should realize the fully burdened labor rates of federal employees are well above that of their contractor counterparts. Couple that with the protections federal employment provides and you have a labor cost model that will always be well and above any contractual labor amount.
 
here is a quote from the Economist June 24th article on this subject:

"Privatisation works when firms can run assets or services more efficiently than the government can, or when competition between firms can bring down costs over time. Sometimes it is easier for private firms to set prices properly, For example, America's airports charge planes to land in proportion to their weight; were they privately owned, they would probably base price on runway congestion, which small planes are prone to cause". (my italics)

So this is one of the viewpoints that GA is up against. If it makes anyone feel better,in the same article, the writer says that the air traffic proposal has too little support to get out of Senate committee. But the next sentence is telling:

" If it does go ahead, America's infrastructure will probably benefit."
 
Art VanDelay said:
Privatization costs more than the federal government ????? You're going to have to show me that.
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Well.....you might start with blackwater. The founder who inherited big bucks from dad, made billions from the govt. by supplying a mercenary army for the U.S, in Iraq. They were not subject to the UCMJ and caused chaos among the civilians, killing many innocent people , etc. American commanders were furious with them . They finally had to change the name and he sold out for big dough after moving out of the U.S.
!There were others like this ripping off the American taxpayer for big bucks, .millions unaccounted for. Then there's the private prisons here in the states that are now being investigated for fraud, terrible treatment of inmates, lousy health care,Etc.the list goes on. Not long ago, a judge in penna, was sentenced for taking a bounty for everyone he found guilty and sent to a private prison near him. On and on. Not to mention the airlines which have to be bailed out by the taxpayers from time to time due to lousy management! Then there's Halliburton, a private company with big time political connections who ripped off the taxpayers with no bid contracts in Iraq. Billions. Their govt. business went up over 200 percent during this war due to insider deals. They were also involved in the fiasco in the bp disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. They also moved from Texas to Dubai not too long ago to avoid U.S. Taxes.
 
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hankrausch said:
here is a quote from the Economist June 24th article on this subject:

"Privatisation works when firms can run assets or services more efficiently than the government can, or when competition between firms can bring down costs over time. Sometimes it is easier for private firms to set prices properly, For example, America's airports charge planes to land in proportion to their weight; were they privately owned, they would probably base price on runway congestion, which small planes are prone to cause". (my italics)

So this is one of the viewpoints that GA is up against. If it makes anyone feel better,in the same article, the writer says that the air traffic proposal has too little support to get out of Senate committee. But the next sentence is telling:

" If it does go ahead, America's infrastructure will probably benefit."
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Exactly. They have been refining the model with demand-based toll rates on the roads around DC. When demand is high, tolls have risen 10-fold, no upper limit, on the toll roads on the DC beltway and I95.

Make no mistake: part of the purpose of privatization is to get GA out of the system, and especially out of major markets. There will simply be no incentive to maintain the current IFR routes over JFK, for example. Not only will there be direct cost for being in the system, but also safety concerns (distant offshore routes) or significantly longer routes (up over Albany).

Privatization is as much about control and limiting GA access to the system as it is about dedicated funds or faster implementation.
 
jesse said:
Your inability to depart EWR isn't because ATC is limited. That's a ridiculous thought. The limitations at EWR are physical limitations. There aren't enough runways nor physical airspace to handle the volume of traffic that goes in and out of such a small geographic area.

I don't care if you put a private industry guy behind the scope or a federal one. There isn't **** that can be done if you load way too many flights into too small of airspace at airports with too few of runways. You exceed a physical limitation.

EWR delays can be resolved by making the appropriate physical changes or reducing the number of operations.

The NYC airports are all running more operations then they were physically designed for. The result - delays - and the need for your gate hold frequency.
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Ok, so you're saying there's absolutely nothing that RNAV curved track approaches and CPDLC equipment will help in the area of ATC ?

And for what it's worth I am not abdicating nor endorsing privatization. I'm only saying it's inevitable.
 
hankrausch said:
here is a quote from the Economist June 24th article on this subject:

"Privatisation works when firms can run assets or services more efficiently than the government can, or when competition between firms can bring down costs over time. Sometimes it is easier for private firms to set prices properly, For example, America's airports charge planes to land in proportion to their weight; were they privately owned, they would probably base price on runway congestion, which small planes are prone to cause". (my italics)

So this is one of the viewpoints that GA is up against. If it makes anyone feel better,in the same article, the writer says that the air traffic proposal has too little support to get out of Senate committee. But the next sentence is telling:

" If it does go ahead, America's infrastructure will probably benefit."
Click to expand...
Actually the economist is wrong. The landing fees are controlled by the airport not by ATC. Most airports are local owned, so they could institute capacity based fees now. And those little piston planes do not cause congestion. They use the small ga runeay which the larger craft cannot and are given vectors off the glide path rather quickly. It is the business jets which are in the way of commercial flights. They fly at the same speeds and are trying to get to the altitudes.

Tim

Sent from my LG-H631 using Tapatalk
 
Art VanDelay said:
Ok, so you're saying there's absolutely nothing that RNAV curved track approaches and CPDLC equipment will help in the area of ATC ?

And for what it's worth I am not abdicating nor endorsing privatization. I'm only saying it's inevitable.
Click to expand...
I understand why you bring this up. However, having one of our airports without this (ORD) and one with it (MDW) I can tell you that in my opinion that will not help with the capacity/wx issues.

The only way to help capacity is more runways and reducing required separation (RVSM helped). Building new runways in places like New York isn't easy/improbable and getting reduced runway separation by the safety people is a hard sell. We have reduced separation behind wake generators and this is causing issues at times with guys reporting 30+ degree rolls behind them.

I'm all for 1 1/2 mile and 500ft vertical radar separation and reduced runway separation...let's let airliners land 3000ft behind each other :)
 
@radarcontact,

The only resolution I see to the congestion in Chicago is to relocate O'hare to the Boonies, and the nearest suitable cornfields that haven't been encroached on by the city are at least 35 NM west; much further by road. An airport with more capacity could be built there. Access highways would have to be built. Same old $*** happens in every city that decides to build in the Boonies, DTW being a classic example. It was built far from downtown and was encroached on immediately thereafter. Yes, more runways are part of the answer. The $64.00 question is where to build them. I believe Denver is on the right track and the state would do well to legally limit development in the area, perhaps only allowing for uses such as UPS and FEDEX, airlines, and cargo. If they allow residential development near KDEN it will result in repetition of the same old theme of complaints by neighbors who chose to build near the airport. Many square miles need to surround a new airport so unwanted development can't take place. Should they not buy enough surrounding property it will result in a never ending battle with the NIMBY's.
 
Art VanDelay said:
Ok, so you're saying there's absolutely nothing that RNAV curved track approaches and CPDLC equipment will help in the area of ATC ?

And for what it's worth I am not abdicating nor endorsing privatization. I'm only saying it's inevitable.
Click to expand...

What's really causing the delay with NextGen? Airlines failure to equip its fleets and the year to year funding by congress. Can your airline's MD-88/90 fleet fly curved approaches? Do they have CLPDC? There are currently RF procedures available.
 
tspear said:
Actually the economist is wrong. The landing fees are controlled by the airport not by ATC. Most airports are local owned, so they could institute capacity based fees now. And those little piston planes do not cause congestion. They use the small ga runeay which the larger craft cannot and are given vectors off the glide path rather quickly. It is the business jets which are in the way of commercial flights. They fly at the same speeds and are trying to get to the altitudes.
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It isn't wrong, you just didn't read it correctly.

You: "The landing fees are controlled by the airport..."
The Economist: "For example, America's airports charge planes to land..."

It was a hypothetical example anyway.
 
kkoran said:
Of course, there's nothing to prevent them from changing that provision in the future.
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That's a weak argument as it's already true. Even under federal control, they could add user fees.
 
StevieTimes said:
This is my concern. I don't know if the airlines would just "soak up the extra cost" without raising prices to offset the extra money they have to spend.
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Fuel prices have dropped dramatically, but the fuel surcharge still remains and it's unlikely to ever be rescinded. To quote from the Aug 25, 2016 article in Business Insider, "Many airlines have kept the fee, but put it under the
label "carrier-imposed fees" or "carrier fees….On Delta's webpage, the company notes that "carrier-imposed surcharges" can amount to as much as $650 for a one-way international flight."
 
AKBill said:
Question 2- How many GA flights per day are there in the US and how would you collect a user fee on GA aircraft not filing a flight plan or flying out of uncontrolled fields?
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From the FAA 2015 statistics:

"There are 24,000 commercial flights per day.
There are less than 200,000 GA aircraft flying 18.1 Million hours in 2015 or
averaging 90 hours per year per GA aircraft.
Remember that the bizjets (which can be a Boeing 737. Or larger.) are considered
GA flights.
There are more than 240 Million cars in the US
There are more than 8 Million combination trucks burning diesel."
 
Art VanDelay said:
Ok, so you're saying there's absolutely nothing that RNAV curved track approaches and CPDLC equipment will help in the area of ATC ?

And for what it's worth I am not abdicating nor endorsing privatization. I'm only saying it's inevitable.
Click to expand...

We've had the ability to build curved approaches since the 80s. MLS. Pioneered by Rocky Mtn Airways. Cheap, too. Didn't catch on because unless you're curving the approach to miss mountainous terrain, like they were, there's literally no benefit.

Putting a curve at the end of a 1000 nm + flight that was nearly a direct line anyway does absolutely nothing when the airlines have booked all of the aircraft in and back out with 40 minute turn times on the schedule... in a blizzard. Or with a thunderstorm tracking across the airport.

Take a look at the FlightAware daily track map. It's all just essentially straight lines from one hub to another. What's broken is hub and spoke, not curved approaches.

And the only "inevitable" thing so far, is that people will lie about the reasons for privatization. There's no compelling business reason to build another AMTRAK fiscal disaster out of ATC. Or USPS. Or pretty much any other "public-private partnership." Any privatized ATC will still answer to FAA. So there's virtually zero chance that it will cost less.

If you really want an eye opener, look into who's behind that website SWA is pushing that blames ATC for all the delays. Fascinating stuff. And really scummy of SWA to distance themselves from it. Why not just make the claims on your own website?

I dug into it for another forum and found some rather interesting businesses being used to host the site, and some rather interesting people doing interviews for the organization, acting like they're "just members" of the state level groups inside that thing... when their resumes say something quite different.

My favorite is the "pilot" expert in one interview who holds a Private Cert only, flies a Rans he didn't build, on weekends, and was the President of a rather large electronic automation firm, that anyone here would recognize for decades. Not one second of professional aviation in his life. He stands there and tells the news camera "all delays are caused by ATC".

The other "expert"/member in one of the state orgs is a paid researcher for politicians at the national level and has been for thirty years. And she's on TV smiling and saying ATC needs more GPS tech. Well practiced smile. Just a "local girl" giving an interview to the local news...

(The reporter was in her early 20s and probably didn't bother asking for her background. Or his. Not enough time behind the camera yet. She normally covers the annual rabbit festival or other stupid crap.)

But yes. If you're insinuating that the Oligarchy wants something, and they're paying big money to fund that organization to manipulate people to get it? Completely agreed.

It has absolutely nothing to do with it being better, cheaper, faster, or any measurable metric.

You might be surprised what Party is paying all the experts too, if you're into Party politics. I'm not. They all work for the same owners anyway.

Anyway, feel free to dig. Start typing names and states of the state "experts" who are getting interviews on TV, and check out the DNS records of the organization and who's hosting the websevers. It'll be enlightening who SWA has decided to get in bed with. Way in bed with apparently.

Norman said:
The $64.00 question is where to build them. I believe Denver is on the right track and the state would do well to legally limit development in the area, perhaps only allowing for uses such as UPS and FEDEX, airlines, and cargo. If they allow residential development near KDEN it will result in repetition of the same old theme of complaints by neighbors who chose to build near the airport. Many square miles need to surround a new airport so unwanted development can't take place. Should they not buy enough surrounding property it will result in a never ending battle with the NIMBY's.
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They bought a lot of property but the residential stuff is already beginning to surround it slowly at the edge of that land. It'll be completely surrounded on the west, south, and probably east, in ten years. North may take a while longer.
 
Norman said:
A Canadian member on another aviation forum said that since privatization of their ATC system and the user fees incurred by the airlines, the price of a ticket in Canada is resulting in people crossing the border into the U.S. where they get cheaper fares.

Second hand information. TIFWIW.
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They have been doing that for years prior to NavCanada. I flew for a commuter airline out of BTV. Half of the passengers were Canadian.
 
Norman said:
@radarcontact,

The only resolution I see to the congestion in Chicago is to relocate O'hare to the Boonies, and the nearest suitable cornfields that haven't been encroached on by the city are at least 35 NM west; much further by road. An airport with more capacity could be built there. Access highways would have to be built. Same old $*** happens in every city that decides to build in the Boonies, DTW being a classic example. It was built far from downtown and was encroached on immediately thereafter. Yes, more runways are part of the answer. The $64.00 question is where to build them. I believe Denver is on the right track and the state would do well to legally limit development in the area, perhaps only allowing for uses such as UPS and FEDEX, airlines, and cargo. If they allow residential development near KDEN it will result in repetition of the same old theme of complaints by neighbors who chose to build near the airport. Many square miles need to surround a new airport so unwanted development can't take place. Should they not buy enough surrounding property it will result in a never ending battle with the NIMBY's.
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Peotone, anyone? :D
 
Reminder - the Senate version does NOT include privatization. Only the House version contains privatization.
 
jesse said:
If this were to pass - which company would likely win the contract and reap the rewards? Lockheed?
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I'm thinking Thales or Aireon. They've been putting ADS-B into Iridium satellites and and validating it into Thales TopSky ATC platform. It's a small step from providing the equipment to also providing the services.
 
Maybe there is some sort of airline profibility issues being foreshadowed by coming driverless automobiles?
 
Clip4 said:
It is not routings, it is the time and destination. You can fly in any place in the US at 2am without congestion.
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+1

I flew diagonally through the Atlanta class bravo a couple of years ago. Around 1:30 am.

It didn't dawn on me that there would be no traffic as is just come from a college football game in central time. As I got near Hartsfield and saw no traffic it was too late; I could have asked for a touch and go with no issues. Probably could have used any runway.

Doh!


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The word is already getting out around air traffic controllers. We've even had controllers get emails from Southwest airlines directly stating the ATC is delaying them and they need to support Privatization. Southwest won't be getting any extra help with their shortcut requests immediately after the wheels hit the well. They even designed the Descend Via into St Louis which has a 280kt speed restriction, they complain about the speed on an hourly basis (literally just had one on my last stint). Looks like ATC is really delaying them with their "custom" arrival that is meant to save fuel.
 
Norman said:
A Canadian member on another aviation forum said that since privatization of their ATC system and the user fees incurred by the airlines, the price of a ticket in Canada is resulting in people crossing the border into the U.S. where they get cheaper fares.

Second hand information. TIFWIW.
Click to expand...

I just completed a highly scientific study.... using Expedia one-way pricing on August 31.

Vancouver --> Juneau: 418
Seattle --> Juneau: 409

Vancouver --> Chicago: 207
Seattle --> Chicago: 234

Neither one warrants a border crossing in either direction. Of course, this was just comparing the cheapest ticket, and not keeping the same airline.
 
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