We are paying for ATC, currently, out of fuel taxes. However , as it is with most taxes, people that levy the tax forget we are already paying. Privatization can be as simple as Canada, where all GA pilots pay a yearly fee for access to most airports, to onerous like th European Union where you pay every time you land at an airport. These fees can be high and multiple, very expensive. I guess the "Devil" is in the details. (self serving cliche). In general , I tend not to favor privatization because the after mentioned reasons.
Cheers
You think a single penny of the fuel taxes will be rescinded if ATC is privatized? LOL. Not a snowball's chance in hell.
Contact your CongressCritter, express your opinion - it's the cheapest & best way to fight the battle. Unless, of course, your CongressCritter is Schuster or McConnell. Then you have a problem.
Congressmen represent 750,000 people. Senators roughly 3.2M. Let's be real clear... they truly don't represent you or give a jack about you.
Especially GA pilots. We don't even make a blip on their radar percentage-wise.
Seen AOPA or EAA denounce the Presidential budget yet? I know the thing is fiction, but usually the purveyors of fiction (lobbyists) at least know how to play along with the fake drama.
Personally I think things like free roads, free sidewalks, free public schools and free flying are a sign of a free society. Now I know, they aren't really free, they get paid for by taxes. But we tried all this toll road stuff years ago and have gradually, for good reason, moved to free (alright tax paid for) services. Not everything, but jeez. Who wants to go back to the old feudal system of private roads, private schools, even private armies. What is this 11th century Italy? Hey, lets charge our kids to play hopscotch on the sidewalk. I mean those sidewalks have to be paid for, ya know!
Right now in Colorado we need more money for roads. And I lot rather pay at the pump than stupid mickey mouse annoying tolls everywhere run by the mafia.
And then we gradually moved to not actually paying for those things but allowing politicians to move the money paid for those things elsewhere. You looked at the 20+ "fees" on the back of a Colorado Vehicle Registration lately?
Don't you also have private tolls on what used to be public roads? That **** ****es me right off, the gov't selling off the roads/bridges/whatever to private corps so they can collect tolls. The public paid for that road to be put in, not to be tolled to death.
Kicking in a few bucks to support the system? You know that money will be put right into a "general fund", right? It'll never go towards paying for the system... you know that, right?
This. Colorado already sold off multiple lanes to the toll road folks, and pretended to hold public meetings about it, while the toll equipment and signage were already lying in the ditches along US 36, ordered months before those meetings were held.
Their excuse? If they gave the toll road profits to the toll road company, the toll road company promised to maintain all of the other lanes.
Promises, promises. That'll never happen.
And let's not forget that all of the widening of our metro area highways has been accomplished by Eminent Domain.
I'm all for public roads. Fine by me. But Colorado isn't sending the taxes collected to roads, and then whines that they need to sell lanes to private toll companies to afford to maintain the other lanes. All without any public input, since they weren't going to send the massive sign posts lying in the ditches, and the LED signs back. There was no public meeting. That was just CDOT scrambling to make it look like there was.
This is as much about the airlines pushing more costs on GA, espcially turbine, and reducing access by GA in order to "encourage" corporate folks that fly GA now to fly airlines. The thinking is that they will be higher revenue passengers. Increased revenue, lower costs for the airlines.
From the ATC standpoint, the question the airlines ask is why each airplane is not charged the same amount for access to the ATC services when each takes about the same resources. An argument has also been made that slow GA takes more resources as they are in each sector for a longer period of time and should be charged more.
The airlines will cut off their noses in spite of their faces if they push this in the middle of a pilot shortage. Make GA more expensive, good luck finding kids who'll work for $30K their first year after paying money to fly every instrument approach. Keep lobbying for it, idiots. Shortsighted and stupid.
The airlines are forgetting that ATC llc. would only provide the absolute minimum service required, and would likely be staffed by close to minimum wage employees who can pass the required tests.
There aren't many ways to increase profit with higher productivity by experienced/skilled controllers, so there's no incentive to pay them much by the ATC llc. Certainly not as much as the FAA people make now. They earn every cent they make, but a privatized business would need to see return for investment from those people, and in ATC environment that's kinda hard.
ATC ain't broke, don't fix it.
Awww, you aren't looking forward to the high quality employee levels agencies like TSA have? C'mon! ;-) You attract only the best and brightest at $17/hr!
