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#24
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"Steven P. McNicoll" writes:
"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote I agree that you need "perfect" competition to yield perfectly low prices, but perfect competition rarely exists in the real world as it requires consumers to have perfect knowledge of all alternate products and their prices. A regional system is far from perfect, but it would provide much more competition than exists now, but certainly far from perfect competition. It wouldn't provide any real competition. The users wouldn't have a choice in providers. And right you are. ATC has a very limited clientele and providing 365/24 service is very expensive. Until the day arrives when you can walk into Radio Shack or Circuit City to select which ATC provider you want to use, there isn't any competition in the consumer sense of the word. I would presume that any privatizing of ATC would involve the Feds awarding a contract or contracts to the "most qualified" bidder having the best price. Who (objectively) determines and quantifies the qualifications? One can easily envision contracts being awarded to the organization that has made the largest campaign contributions (bribes) to the political party in power at the time. What would be the transition process? A contractor can't just walk in on day 1 and tell all the controllers that they're on the street and are being replaced by a machine. If the contractor can't instantly eliminate all the controllers, where will qualified controllers be obtained? Who is going to certify them as being competent to do their job? What is the backup process in case the chosen contractor fails to perform? Will the current controllers be kept on the payroll as a "hot backup" in case the contractor has to be terminated? Let's say that a contractor devises a super slick, whiz-bang way to automate ATC. If the contractor installs the ground equipment for this, does it depart with the contractor when the next contract is awarded to another contractor? ATC operations are suspended for some number of months while the new contractor replaces all the equipment? [Instead of "radar service terminated", we'd have "radar terminated"?] If the super slick, whiz-bang automation comes to pass, who's going to control the interface for the end-users? Who is going to convince the end-users that they have to spend some possibly large amount of money per aircraft to be compatible with the scheme devised by the (latest) contractor? What if the next contractor decides that the previous contractor's scheme sucks and wants to produce something quite different? |
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