Orval Fairbairn wrote:
2 Have you listened to anybody other than the Air Transport Assn., the
airlines or Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, who is the chief
shill for user fees?

I have voted for Libertarians and have read Poole's analysis and proposals.
I consider his analysis shallow and dangerous. Poole is confusing user fees
with free market forces - his analysis ignores all the other aspects of
those forces. User fees in conjunction with fuel taxes provide no
measurable incentive for the ATC provider to operate efficiently. The fuel
taxes insure that choice - in this case the option to not use the system so
as to not incur fees - is reduced, not increased. The combination of fuel
taxes, user fees, distancing of legislative oversight over revenue, and
government regulation creates a system about as anti-free market as you can
get.

From an engineering standpoint the existing ATC system appears to be headed
the wrong way - toward centralized single-point-of-failure. Nor does it
provide any economies of scale - as the flight load increases, the ATC
structure grows proportionally. But if the flight load decreases, there is
a minimum size beyond which it cannot reasonably contract. User fees do
nothing to correct these serious and fundamental deficiencies.