Larry Dighera wrote:
On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 10:14:11 -0600, Newps wrote
in ::



Larry Dighera wrote:
Could it be? The President is a friend of GA? Or is the FSS
modernization the camel's nose under the user-fee tent?

A friend to GA would let FSS die.

If there were no Flight Service Stations, how would you get briefed
about all the pop-up TFRs and military activity?

FSS costs $502m annually according to the FAA. There are roughly 5,000
public-use airports to think about. That's $100k per airport PER YEAR.
How much do those WSI satellite terminals cost?

Let's get even more creative... A Garmin 396 costs $2500. There are
about 100,000 N-numbered aircraft, IIRC. The government could buy us
all a G-396 for Christmas, and have $250 million left over that year to
buy us XM Weather subscriptions, which would leave $200m in the bank.
In the first year. Year 2 the savings go waaay up.

The issue here is that Weather, TFRs, etc. are information. Information
costs a fixed amount to manufacture, and a variable amount to
distribute. FSS with 2500 employees is a very costly way of
distributing it. My example of the 396 is not meant literally but it
shows just how ridiculous the gap is.

If FSS added significant value through human expertise, it would be
different. It's my understanding that once upon a time, FSS specialists
actually had local expertise and could tell you things that weren't
written in the forecasts. If that's what we had, I'd fight for it too.
Nowadays it seems to me that they are basically unionized, highly-paid
call center reps. Talk about contradictions in terms. If you're coming
at his from the labor union angle that wants to preserve any union job,
that's logical, but it's not benefiting GA. Imagine if instead of using
Google you had to call a phone number and have people read URLs back to
you. Welcome to FSS today.

-cwk.