I know it’s about 90 days since a very similar headline, but it’s happening again — the Senate is delaying passage of FAA Reauthorization Act once again (this makes seven times in a row). They promise they will get it done in March, but don’t hold your breath. Consumers seem to be last in the pecking order.
This latest Senate vote means the improvements to the air traffic control system will still stay on “hold.” With those improvements on hold, airlines will be burning millions of additional gallons of jet fuel. Passengers will be sitting on tarmacs far longer than they need to. Aircraft spacing in the New York airspace will stay at decades-old technical levels. Airlines will have another excuse for putting off installing advanced avionics. The solution to what some say is 70 percent of all airline delays will stay packed in boxes.
Few issues in Washington evoke the universal agreement that the need for an improved air traffic control system does. Few issues impact the American public as dramatically and air travelers so universally.
Passengers, who understand the ramifications, want it. Families who miss flights because of missed connections, want it. Businessmen trying to get home to wife and kids want it. Anyone stuck in a tarmac delay, screams for it.
Airline executives, trying to balance the books, want it to save on fuel and get more efficiency from aircraft. Pilots, circling in landing patterns, want it. Airports, limited to old capacity levels, want it. The military, that has to give up some of its training airspace from time to time, wants it. Air traffic controllers, who are doing more with less, want it.
Carbon-control-crazed Congressmen should want it. International airlines want it. Newspapers want it. Convention and visitors bureaus want it. The tourism industry across America wants.
Alas, it is not getting done.
Between extraneous issues and financing battles, the airline industry and the American public are getting the short end of the stick. It is a Christmas lump of coal from our Senators. Humbug back to them too.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
