The topic of air traffic control (ATC) privatization funded by user fees is once again circulating in the U.S. political arena, possibly spurred by a recent Reason Foundation Aviation Policy News article by Robert Poole, the organization’s director of transportation policy.
“Converting America’s air traffic control system into a user-funded system is a bipartisan issue,” Poole argued in his article. “Legislation to that effect was developed by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) during the Clinton administration as part of its reinventing government agenda. A detailed proposal to take the ATO [air traffic organization] out of DOT and convert it into a user-funded nonprofit corporation was supported by the Trump administration and was twice approved by the House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee (in 2017 and 2018). Former T&I Committee Chair Bill Shuster recently wrote that it’s time to try again. That recent effort won the support of the airline industry, the air traffic controllers’ union, and the Business Roundtable. It was endorsed by the editorial pages of many of America’s largest newspapers.”
More In Regulations and Government
