Fixing U.S. air traffic control

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 20th of February.

This is WORLD Radio and we thank you for listening. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown. First up on The World and Everything in It, re-thinking how the Federal Aviation Administration operates.

REICHARD: Right, this week, the family of a passenger killed in the recent Blackhawk helicopter and jet crash filed claims against both the Army and the F.A.A. WORLD’s Lindsay Mast talked to an aviation expert who says it’s time to re-think how the agency is run.

LINDSAY MAST: Thanks, Mary and Myrna . Of course, the investigation into that crash in D.C. last month is ongoing. This week the National Transportation Safety Board chairperson said there may have been missed communication from Air Traffic Control to the Blackhawk.

Robert Poole is the Director of Transportation Policy at the Reason Foundation. He has testified before Congressional subcommittees about privatizing air traffic control and he joins us now. Robert, good morning.

ROBERT POOLE: Good morning. Glad to be with you today.

LINDSAY MAST: I'd like to talk first about some of the historical problems with the FAA and air traffic control, particularly in terms of technology. Can you talk about that and maybe give us some specific examples of problems and mishaps?

POOLE: Well, there are all sorts of technologies that are needed. They're used in other countries, and are slowly being rolled out by FAA, but their procurement process is very flawed. Because FAA gets annual budget appropriations from Congress if they need to equip several 100 facilities with this new device.

They only get a certain amount every year in the budget for new stuff, so they have to roll it out over 15-20 years, you know, in dribs and drabs, the last facility to get them, it may be obsolete technologically, by the time they get it. This stuff isn't static.

MAST: What challenges to improving air traffic control systems do you see, particularly financially and politically?

POOLE: ​​First of all, there's there's also a “not invented here” approach within FAA, they're very traditional. The FAA Research Center of Atlantic City, more than about 15 years ago, invented something called a remote digital tower, where, instead of having a tall structure with windows at the top, you put cameras on masts all around the airport, with some of them infrared, so they could see in the dark. They could see through fog and so forth, things that the controller in a tall building looking out a window cannot even see.

So they published a couple of papers on this, and they did the FAA as an organization, did nothing with this idea. Saab, in Switzerland, which is a big aerospace defense company, pioneered it. And they and other Scandinavian countries and Germany and more and more countries in Europe are implementing these as a big improvement. They cost less to build and they cost less to operate. Those digital towers have little tags that go on the screen, tracking every single plane that in the sky and on the ground, so they can follow, in real time, exactly where each one is.

MAST: You think the answer is privatization. What would, what would it look like if we went from the current system to privatization?

POOLE: One of the major differences would be that it would operate like a public utility, like your electric company, or like a toll road, and with that revenue stream, they can issue revenue bonds, just like airports do for large for they need to expand a terminal and build a new run. They issue bonds. And so it's easy to finance large scale facility replacements, to get equipment, new equipment, like the electronic flight strips, buy the whole batch for all the facilities at once in one procurement, and then roll it out in the first year or two.

Nav Canada is the largest of these private non-profits and it's been in operation, I think it's 15 or 20 years now, and it's very highly rated. It pioneers new technology. The point is to get it out of tax funding. The FAA would still be there, but in its original role as the FAA the aviation safety regulator.

Today, with both of the aircraft control and the safety regulation in the same house, it's a conflict of interest. FAA regulates every other part of aviation at arm's length, airlines, private pilots, mechanics, airports, every repair station, they're all regulated at arm's length. Most countries around the world, ever since 2001 the International Civil Aviation Organization, which is UN agency for air safety, put out guidelines that said you should have organizational separation between air safety regulation and both airports and Air Traffic Control arm's length, because it's works better, it's more trust trustful, reliable, and avoids this conflict of interest. So that's another aspect of changing the system to make it a high tech service business regulated by the the aviation safety regulator.

MAST: I think part of the obvious question in all of this is, would these types of changes have made a difference in the crash last month in D.C.?

POOLE: Probably not. I see one problem was that the helicopter and the airlines, they were operating on the same on the same kind of radio, VHF signals, but on two different frequencies, so they could not hear each other's conversations with the control tower, which mean they didn't have the full picture of what was going on.

The other thing that troubles me, all Air aircraft in the United States flying in controlled airspace have to have a device called ADA-B, which sends out signals saying exact every three seconds, where they are, what altitude, what direction, what speed, and so forth. The Black Hawk helicopters was not was turned on, or at least it was not sending out signals if that had been on the controller in the tower would have seen exactly where the copter was in real time every three seconds update, and would have said, “Oh, no, you got to move now.”

And so my recommendation is they've got to get those, those helicopter routes out of the Potomac, away from DCA, that Reagan National Airport. That's too dangerous a situation, inherently, even if, even if the ADSB, if the military changed their policy, which they may not because of security reasons, these are many high ranking generals flying to from the Pentagon to meet somebody on the Capitol Hill or something or whatever. So we may be stuck with that.

MAST: So in your opinion, what will it take to improve air traffic control?

Almost all the really meaningful improvements require getting it out of the government budget process and making it self funded, like any other utility. I mean, even if it stayed somehow in government, it's got to get off of the annual budget thing. It's got to be exempt from that and able to raise capital. The high altitude centers are 50 to 65 years old and starting to fall apart, and the billions and billions it would be need to replace them, cannot possibly come from the annual operating budgets of FAA.

MAST: Last question, very quickly, we've talked about a lot of problems. I'm getting on a plane Friday morning, lots of other people still flying. Should we feel safe?

POOLE: I feel safe. I'm a 2 million mile frequent flyer on American Airlines, and I have lifetime platinum status. I don't hesitate to get on board a plane. It's still far safer than driving,

MAST: Robert Poole is Director of Transportation Policy at the Reason Foundation, Robert, thank you so much for your time today.

POOLE: Very glad to do it. Thanks.

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