Shutdown highlights longtime government delays in modernizing airport security. 18 year TSA experiment in government-run airport security begun in panic after 911 needs to end-IBD Editorial

1/25/19, “Shutdown Exposes Another Government Agency Ripe For Privatization — Air Traffic Control,” Investors Business Daily Editorial

Air Traffic Control: As the partial government shutdown drags on, the nation’s air traffic controllers warn that it’s putting the safety of air travel at risk. Here’s a solution: Privatize the air traffic control system.

On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced flight delays at several major airports due to staffing shortages among air traffic controllers. That followed a statement released earlier in the week, in which the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, along with pilots’ and flight attendants’ unions, said that “air safety environment … is deteriorating by the day.”
The statement goes on to say that “we cannot even calculate the level of risk currently at play, nor predict the point at which the entire system will break.”

Shutdown and Air Travel

We’re not in a position to judge whether the dire warnings of risk are valid, or hyperbole from government workers tired of waiting for their paychecks to show up. Obviously as the shutdown, now in its fifth week, drags on, the strain on various government workers and functions will increase.

The shutdown is clearly starting to have an impact on airport operations. In addition to the delays, Southwest Airlines said Thursday that it will lose up to $15 million this month because of the shutdown’s impact on travel. Delta Air Lines said it will likely lose $25 million.

But all of this raises a question: Why is the nation’s air traffic control system at the mercy of a federal budget standoff at all?

We noted in this space last week that the shutdown exposed why lawmakers should return the TSA back to the private sector.

Similarly, there’s no good reason for the ATC to be a government-run organization. And many reasons why it should the U.S. should follow in the footsteps of several other industrialized nations — including Canada — that have successfully privatized their air traffic control.

Benefits of Privatization

Beyond freeing the ATC from federal government budget battles, it would give the ATC the opportunity to do something it hasn’t been able to do for decades: upgrade its technology, improve its operations, run more efficiently and better manage its workforce.

As it stands, the ATC, like so many other functions of government, is a tangle of waste and mismanagement.

For years the Federal Aviation Administration, which runs the ATC and regulates air safety, has been the subject of blistering audits from the Government Accountability Office and the Department of Transportation’s inspector general.

Cost overruns and delays have plagued the ATC’s efforts to modernize its antiquated equipment. Started in 2004, the FAA’s so-called NextGen project won’t be finished until sometime after 2025. Year after year, its failures have been exposed by devastating audits.

In 2017, the inspector general said basically that the FAA has botched the upgrade, finding, among other things that it “lacked effective management controls.”

At the same time, the ATC has for years suffered a shortage of flight controllers, and received stern warnings that it had to fix its staffing problems.

Last year [2018], the Air Traffic Controllers union complained that the government is losing controllers faster than it can hire new ones. The head of the union said that “we’re at a 30-year low of certified controllers in a system.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.

Canada Is A Role Model

Take Canada as an example. In 1996, that country moved its air traffic control system from a government agency to a private nonprofit called NavCanada. Unlike the ATC, NavCanada is self-funded, so it isn’t at the mercy of federal budget battles.

As a result, it’s been able to modernize and improve operations. Even the ATC union boss admits that NavCanada is “developing probably the best equipment out there … And they’re doing it in a 30-month to three-year time frame.”

The UK, France, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and Switzerland have likewise offloaded their formerly government-run air traffic control systems.

President Donald Trump has been advocating that the U.S. follow in their footsteps since he took office. Unfortunately, the GOP-controlled Congress did nothing.

Will Pelosi Listen To Workers? 

When Trump first broached the subject, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed it as an attempt to “hand control” of the ATC to “special interests and the big airlines.” 

Then again, maybe she’ll listen to the controllers themselves. Because their troubles won’t end when the government shutdown does.”
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Added: It’s time to end the 18-year TSA experiment begun in panic after 911:

Jan. 2019, “After The Government Shutdown, Privatize The TSA,” Investors Business Daily Editorial

“Failing Screening Tests...

TSA screeners have repeatedly failed to do their one job: prevent passengers from bringing contraband onto planes. 

In 2006, undercover agents were able to get fake bombs past screeners 75% of the time. They were able to do so 96% of the time in a 2015 test. And in 2017, agents were able to beat TSA agents some 80% of the time.

Just this month, a passenger — inadvertently — made it through security at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson with a gun and boarded a plane bound for Tokyo. The agency’s response: “TSA has determined standard procedures were not followed.”

Audits by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general have uncovered vast amounts of waste. In one case, the TSA spent $160 million on body scanners that failed 96% of the time. A congressional investigation found that the agency dumped $44 million on “explosive trace detectors” that it didn’t need.

Conflict of Interest

But the TSA is troublesome for another reason: It both operates and regulates airport security. “From a purely good-government perspective, the TSA has an inherent conflict of interest,” noted the Heritage Foundation’s David Inserra.

Private contractors would be more efficient, more flexible, and more accountable than the TSA. If for no other reason than they risk getting fired. The TSA isn’t ever going to fire itself for incompetence.

The TSA’s sorry record is no doubt why 22 airports around the country have opted to hire their own private screening service, under the oversight of the TSA. These include San Francisco, Kansas City, Key West, Orlando Sanford and Atlantic City International airports. Canada and most of Europe employ private screeners as well, Inserra notes.

It’s time to end the 18-year experiment in government-run airport security. Preferably before the next government shutdown….

TSA Delays Aren’t New

The fact is that on any given day, there will be long lines to get through security at some airports. Anyone who has traveled frequently knows this. Yet the press now treats every line at security checkpoints as examples of the grave harm caused by the government shutdown.

The problem with the TSA isn’t the government shutdown, it’s with the TSA itself.

The agency was created in a panic after 9/11, when officials decided to blame private airport screeners for letting terrorists board planes with box cutters.

So, Congress, with the blessing of President Bush, nationalized airport screening and gave birth to the Transportation Security Administration, which has seen its budget climb more than 41% since 2005.

The result has been little short of a disaster of poor performance and wasteful spending.

A recent Government Accountability Office report found that from 2014 through 2016, the TSA handled 45,153 cases of misconduct by employees.

Nearly half — 22,373 — involved “unexcused or excessive absences or tardiness, absence without leave, failure to follow leave procedures.“ More than 6,000 involved “screening and security offenses.” Another 2,703 were for things like sexual misconduct, fighting and abusive language. And 2,562 were for “neglect of duty.”

Keep in mind that the TSA employs only about 53,000 people. In other words, each year about a quarter of the TSA’s workforce was under investigation for misconduct. And, in typical government fashion, most of those violations (65%) resulted in nothing more than a sternly worded letter. Only 4% of the misconduct investigations led to any employee getting fired, only 9% resulted in a suspension.”…




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