AOPA and ATC Privatization

"Chip Jones" wrote in message
hlink.net...

"Mark Kolber" wrote in message
...
[snipped]


I think it ultimately comes down to this: The conference report that
NATCA is complaining about permits privatization to a larger degree
than the original House version and to a much larger degree than the
Senate version.

Bingo. Both the House and the Senate voted on bills that *prohibited* ATC
privatization beyond the current contract tower program. The FAA lobbied
against the bills as passed. The White House threatened a veto. The
House
and Senate bills went into the reconciliation process as an AOPA/NATCA
victory against ATC privatization.

During the reconciliation process, the conferees, under intense White
House
pressure, re-wrote the language in such a way that FAA VFR towers not
currently privatized may be contracted out. There are 71 of those towers.
2 of them are in Alaska (PAMR and PAJN). The Administration agreed that
the
two Alaska towers in contention (both in the home state of Don Young, R-
Alaska chairman of the reconcioliation conference) could stay FAA, leaving
the other 69 to be contracted out. Also, rather than indefinitely
prohibiting by law further outsourcing of other Federal ATC services (like
Tracons and Centers), the reconciliation conference put into effect a
"sunset clause", making 2007 the year that wholesale privatization of the
system becomes possible.

This disturbs controllers because both the Republican House and the
Republican Senate voted decisively vefore the summer recess to prohibit
ATC
privatization. The Reconciliation team inserted the new language when
they
"reconciled" the two bills, LOL. Further disturbing controllers is that
AOPA abandoned the fight at this point because other provisions of the
reconciled bill are GA friendly.

The fact remains, ATC is statistically the largest killer of common carrier
passengers, except terrorists. Failure to maintain seperation cost the
system a fortune in 737 PCUs that had no problem. Automation is something
ATC Union has blocked for 30 years and it is time to correct the problem.