"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

wrote in message ...

And, you have a reactionary Air Traffic Service that is very, very
resistant to
any change, especially if they believe it will adversely affect staffing
levels, pay, or working conditions. That comes ahead of any need to
serve
the
aviation community.

It's a government bureaucracy; what the hell did you expect?

Here! http://www.mises.org/etexts/mises/bureaucracy.asp


A more interesting question might be, "what is in our (light GA's)
interests?"

I'm generally of the Hayekian school on things but I have no reason to
believe that privatizing ATC services would be beneficial to us.
Specifically, while user fees might come of their own accord, they are IMHO
a certainty if we have Boeing or LockMar running the show. Given that it
probably costs about as much to handle a C-172 on an IFR flight plan as it
does to handle a G-V, I don't see any reason to expect this to work out in
our favor.

Flying VFR? Don't worry, filing a flight plan may someday become necessary
(as it is in Canada), perhaps "for security purposes." Oh yeah, and to pay
to file the flight plan. Pure coincidence. Nothing to see here, move
along...

The way I figure it, pilots as a group are probably in the high end of the
income distribution, so the nickels and dimes we mooch off the federal ATC
system are more than made up for by the quarters and dollars we contribute
to everything else they shouldn't be doing.

Also, so long as ATC is a 100% government entity, it is easier to pressure
it to make decisions politically, which is to say un-economically.
Personally I think this works out in our favor more often than not.

I don't doubt that privatized ATC could in time become more economically
efficient, though the benefits are probably overstated by many. But I do
wonder whether the airspace that results from this would be more or less
accessible to us. I think all of us can agree that the skies belong to all
of us and should be kept as open as possible. Most of the time, freedom and
economic efficiency overlap. But when they don't, I will favor freedom.

-cwk.