Canada fixed its air traffic control decades ago. Why can't America?

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There is no mystery about what ails air traffic control in this country: It is run by the government, which is ill-suited to the task. Worse yet, the agency that's in charge of providing air traffic control, the Federal Aviation Administration, is also the agency that regulates it — an inherent conflict of interest. As journalist John Tierney put it in
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That's only part of the problem. Because the FAA is an arm of the government, its operations, including air traffic control, are inevitably politicized. Since the agency has to be reauthorized annually, its funding is tied not to market forces but to the priorities of politicians, lobbyists, and interest groups. That chronic
Happily, there is a straightforward solution: Get the federal government out of the air traffic control business.
'Countless studies have shown that other countries' ATC systems are better-managed, better-funded, and better-supplied with advanced technology,' Robert Poole, the Reason Foundation's director of transportation policy,
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Not much has changed since
Our neighbor to the north long ago made the leap to nongovernmental air traffic control. In 1996, Canada created Nav Canada, a not-for-profit corporation that is fully funded by users of the system — that is, airlines and other aircraft operators — and thus doesn't cost taxpayers a cent. The results have been almost uniformly positive. Nav Canada funds its own modernization and operates on a solid financial footing. The company has
Canada boasts state-of-the-art satellite navigation systems. Almost 10 years ago, The Wall Street Journal's aviation columnist, Scott McCartney,
In Canadian ATC towers, there are no strips of paper to shuffle. Instead, controllers update information about each flight on touch screens and pass the information to one another electronically. 'Requests for altitude changes are automatically checked for conflicts before they even pop up on controllers' screens,' McCartney wrote. 'Computers look 20 minutes ahead for any planes potentially getting too close to each other. Flights are monitored by a system more accurate than radar, allowing them to be safely spaced closer together to add capacity and reduce delays.'
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The FAA, meanwhile, has been working on upgrading its technology for more than 20 years, but its efforts, as the trade group Airlines for America
America's antiquated air traffic control system is both embarrassing and unnecessary. The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented. In 2017, legislation to privatize ATC operations along the lines of the Canadian model
This would be a fine time to revive that legislation. Is it naive to imagine that fixing air traffic control is one way to 'make America great again' that
doesn't
have to involve polarizing rhetoric or angry culture wars? The formula is clear: Carve air traffic control out of the FAA, move it to an independent, user-funded corporation, and let market needs — not politics — dictate priorities. Under such a 'separation of ATC and state,' safety oversight would remain with the FAA, but the era of paper strips and floppy disks would finally end.
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Jeff Jacoby can be reached at