The recently concluded government shutdown caused anxiety for millions of Americans making holiday travel plans. Due to a lapse in appropriations, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy had announced that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) could be forced to reduce the number of flights at key airports by 10%.
This prompted many to ask why the nation’s aviation system was at risk due to dysfunction in Congress. Failure to pass appropriations on time has increasingly become the norm rather than the exception, and there is a growing understanding that shutting down the federal government should not mean shutting down the skies.
Fortunately, there is a way to prevent disagreements on Capitol Hill from disrupting flights while making flying better than ever: freeing aviation from the Washington swamp. In the process, Congress can deliver badly needed budgetary savings.
Air Traffic Control: Keep Federal Oversight, Not Operations
The federal government operates the nation’s Air Traffic Control (ATC) system, which is responsible for directing flights and safeguarding against mid-air collisions. Most federal aviation operations, including ATC, are funded through the Transportation appropriations bill.
FAA personnel stop receiving paychecks during a shutdown. However, most ATC employees are deemed as essential during a shutdown and told to continue their normal working hours. This often leads to high absentee rates as a form of protest. Since many ATC locations already struggled with staff shortages before the shutdown, having even a few employees fail to come to work can hamstring operational capacity.
The solution to this recurring problem is to change who issues the paychecks for ATC. While all major nations have an ATC system, a growing number have set up private organizations funded by the aviation industry to perform the needed operations. Canada is one of many examples where a nation with large airspace turned over ATC to a private entity and achieved positive results.
While the government retains regulatory oversight of ATC under such a reform, it would mean that the system does not rely on federal appropriations for ongoing work or technological upgrades. It would also shift the $10 billion annual cost of the ATC system from taxpayers to the companies and passengers who use the service.
ATC is not the only aspect of aviation affected by a lapse of federal appropriations.
Airport Security: 24 Years of TSA Screening is Enough
Congress created the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The TSA not only regulates aviation security but also performs passenger screenings at most airports, making it vulnerable to a lapse in appropriations. (The Screening Partnership Program allows airports to hire private screening services at the airport’s expense and is used at 20 locations, including San Francisco).
There are many complaints about the TSA. Screening lines regularly add hours to travel times while having a poor track record of detecting prohibited items. The TSA’s labor union makes it nearly impossible to fire employees who are abusive to the public. It costs taxpayers $10 billion per year. Wasteful regulations, such as the shoe removal policy, can linger long after it is obvious that they are unnecessary.
While it was reasonable to seek stronger airport security after the 2001 terrorist attacks, that does not mean the federal government should be both regulating and performing airport screenings. Instead, the federal government should move towards a privatized screening model and have the TSA provide oversight. As with ATC, this approach works for many peer countries, and it would remove most of the TSA’s cost from taxpayers.
Airport Infrastructure: Dependency and Control
Another portion of the FAA’s budget involves providing grants for airport infrastructure. Much of this comes from the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which is financed by a tax on airline tickets. Federal airport infrastructure grants are highly redistributive, with larger airports receiving much less funding compared to their share of passenger traffic, while small and noncommercial airports receive heavy subsidies. (The Essential Air Service program provides additional handouts to small airports).
The federal government makes it difficult for airports to properly self-finance. An outdated cap on the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC), unchanged since 2000, makes airports overly dependent on federal grants.
Federal policy even gives an advantage to government ownership of airports rather than private ownership, another way in which the U.S. is an outlier. Where government airports can use tax-free municipal bonds to finance projects, private airport projects typically do not receive such treatment and are thus at a disadvantage.
End Airport Socialism
The federal government has thus socialized airports and aviation to an incredible degree. America’s largest airports are more vulnerable to flight delays as a result of insufficient gate and runway capacity and are in worse condition than they should be. The passenger experience is worse because of government-operated security screenings. The aviation system is subject to wholesale disruption based on the status of appropriations. Unnecessary spending stands to add hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal budget over the next decade.
There are special interests that support the dysfunctional status quo. Employee unions would strongly oppose any attempt to privatize the TSA or security screenings. Some airlines oppose increasing the PFC. These groups should not be ignored, yet they should certainly not hold veto power over the needs of tens of millions of Americans who take to the skies every month.
Americans developed modern flight. America uses air travel more than any other country. Americans deserve a better and more reliable air travel experience than the one they currently endure. The solution is not more federal spending and subsidies, but instead to have the federal government end its micromanagement of the aviation sector.
