Thank goodness the FAA shutdown is over! More than once during the past several days, I recalled a line I wrote for the report of the National Commission to Ensure a Strong Competitive Airline Industry, to the effect that aviation is the only industry whose day to day efficiency is capped by the efficiency of the federal government.
ACI-NA has been arguing for years that we need to reduce federal influence in the building of airport infrastructure and give airports the financial freedom to raise their own resources and communities and the freedom to invest. If this shutdown, which closed hundreds of projects around the country, doesn’t prove why it is important to do that, I don’t know what will.
The financial framework under which airports must work to raise and spend investment capital dates back to the Nixon Administration; back when the federal government told the airlines where they could fly and how much they could charge; back in the day when wage and price controls seemed like a good idea. Congress got the federal government out of the business of running airlines in 1978, but left the federal government right in the middle of the business of financing airport infrastructure. With the self-inflicted wound of the FAA shutdown as fresh evidence, we can see just how stupid that is. (Yes, I said STUPID!)
Around the world, aviation infrastructure is being built using new and current financial techniques. Our competitors are eating our lunch, while we are stuck with Nixon-era federal shackles.
We need to free the airports of this country to invest in our economic future. Our laws, and the short-sighted connivance of the airlines, impose a federal boot on the necks of airports everywhere. We need to modernize the financial framework under which airports operate and invest. It will benefit our passengers, our country, our economy, our communities and, I would strongly argue, the airlines themselves. Yes, I said it, the airlines as well.
The FAA shutdown should provide all the evidence we need that we can no longer shackle airports’ ability to finance needed projects. Anyone who can’t see that probably can’t see the large “E” at the top of the eye chart. Or maybe doesn’t want to open his or her eyes at all to the new reality.
