After three years of delay and 16 short-term funding extensions, only a few legislative days remain for Congress to act on FAA Reauthorization this year. The Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO and its affiliated unions are urging the Senate to pass the FAA bill before adjournment.

The traveling public cannot afford another extension to next spring or later. Across the nation flight delays are chronic with 1 in 4 flights arriving or departing late in some airports. As the economy improves flight delays will only worsen. Meanwhile, airports are operating at capacity, runway incursions are on the rise and our air traffic control system is still using 50-year-old technology. FAA Reauthorization presents an opportunity to address these issues and many others.

For the workers we represent, passage of a comprehensive, multi-year FAA Reauthorization is critical. This legislation presents an opportunity to fix the broken collective bargaining system at the FAA, to protect the safety and health of flight attendants, to strengthen federal rules and oversight of aircraft maintenance outsourced to foreign repair stations, to improve the safety of aircraft operations, and to level the playing field for express carrier workers. In addition, this legislation will create 300,000 jobs at a time when our economy continues to struggle and too many Americans are out of work.

FedEx and its allies in the Senate have made it clear that they will use any and all procedural objections to block a bill that would eliminate the company’s ability to game our labor laws at the expense of its competitors and to the detriment of its workers. And now other issues have emerged that are stalling consideration of this bill. The Senate must work to resolve outstanding slot issues and pass a bill that improves safety, puts people to work, enhances worker rights, and ensures the efficiency of our aviation system. Further delay is simply not an option.

It’s been two and a half years and 16 extensions since the current debate on this FAA reauthorization bill began. Whatever the results of the upcoming election, Congress needs to make a fresh start and introduce legislation that will maintain and improve the aviation system’s stellar safety record, foster the competitiveness and viability of the airline industry, and implement a next-generation air traffic control system that delivers measureable benefits to passengers and the country.

IMPROVE SAFETY

Since air travel is already safer than other modes of travel, Congress must enact policies to ensure that past dramatic improvements in airline safety are continued. Our commitment to safety is currently being realized through implementation of Safety Management Systems, which ensure an overall framework for continuous and comprehensive safety improvements.

Data and enhanced data analysis are the critical components of a safer system. These systems don’t simply rely on accident data, rather the emphasis is on the analysis of a variety of air traffic control, airline and employee data, collected and reported on flights that operate and land safely. In order to ensure that this data (collected through voluntary programs) is supplied, Congress should enact more comprehensive legal protection of this data. In addition, all relevant participants (for example, maintenance providers) should be included in voluntary safety programs.

ENSURE THE COMPETITIVENESS AND VIABILITY OF THE AVIATION SYSTEM

Why is it important to have a viable aviation system? Because a healthy aviation system fuels jobs – a key priority for Congress and the administration.

More than ever, aviation is a global industry. Any FAA bill should facilitate the continued expansion of the DOT Open Skies initiative, especially in emerging markets such as China and Brazil. Global alliances that enable competition should be fostered, not threatened by arbitrary elimination of antitrust immunity.

These global markets are fed by service from small communities. Service to small communities will be diminished if Congress pursues higher tax and regulatory burdens. Any bill should freeze existing levels of aviation taxes and fees. After a decade of losses mounting to almost $60 billion, the industry is attempting to climb back, and it is critical that Congress not disrupt this fragile recovery by increasing aviation’s tax or regulatory burden.

FOCUS EFFORTS ON NEXTGEN TO DELIVER BENEFITS TO PASSENGERS QUICKLY

NextGen has long been touted as the way to reduce both delays and the environmental impact of aviation. Congress should ensure that the FAA delivers real benefits to passengers and the country by establishing performance metrics, such as reduced gate-to-gate times and reduced fuel burn, to measure the successful implementation of NextGen. Unless specific performance metrics are delineated, it is likely that taxpayers could spend millions of dollars but not see measurable improvements in the air traffic control system.

Congress has just enacted its 15th extension of the FAA’s expired authorization, which includes the aviation excise taxes that feed the Aviation Trust Fund, on which both air traffic control and federal airport grants depend. This process began in early 2007, when the FAA presented a bold plan to reform the agency’s funding, under which the ticket tax and segment fee would have been replaced with ATC user fees for commercial users to fund its Air Traffic Organization. The other aviation excise taxes would have funded the airport grants program (AIP), and general federal revenues would have supported the FAA’s aviation safety regulation and miscellaneous (e.g. commercial space flight) operations. Congress largely ignored those proposals, but was nowhere close to agreeing on a bill when that fiscal year ended on Sept. 30, 2007. Three years later, we still have congressional gridlock.

During the 2007 battles over FAA funding reform, supporters of the status quo argued that the established system provided a “stable funding source” for key aviation programs. I took the other side of that debate, pointing to several previous cases of much-delayed reauthorization and even to a couple of instances when Congress failed to act at all, leaving the FAA to pay its salaries and other operating costs by drawing down what was then (fortunately) a large unobligated balance in the Trust Fund. Our general aviation friends also repeatedly said that the status quo was far better than some kind of commercialization (such as Nav Canada) with a board of directors representing key aviation stakeholders, and that Congress was the best imaginable board of directors for the ATC system. We haven’t heard that one recently!

Everyone in aviation—and many in Congress—give lip service to the idea that large-scale investment to create the NextGen ATC system should be a national priority. The President and the DOT Secretary have said the same thing. Yet nobody seems willing to admit that the current bizarre funding system holds the ATC modernization budget hostage to parochial congressional disputes over whether Fedex or UPS has the right system of compensating its truck drivers and which airlines might should be selected by Congress to provide new long-haul service to Reagan National Airport.

And airlines are increasingly finding ways to weasel out of paying a portion of the passenger ticket tax—the largest single source of funding for the Aviation Trust Fund. By charging ancillary fees for all sorts of services that used to be included in the ticket price, airlines can reduce the amount against which the 7.5% passenger ticket tax is levied. As part of its recent analysis, GAO researchers calculated that had the ticket tax been applied just to baggage fees, it would have generated an additional $186 million in revenues for the Trust Fund (about 2%). Neither DOT nor GAO knows the total amount of ancillary fee revenues being collected by airlines, since most are not required to be reported to DOT.

This phenomenon also creates further disparities among airlines in paying their fair share for air traffic control. During the 2007 battles over FAA’s proposed ATC user fees, both GAO and the DOT Inspector General’s Office did studies highlighting the fact that an ATC charge based on passenger numbers and fares creates large disparities among commercial aircraft that end up paying significantly different amounts for the same ATC services. The most obvious case is a 50-seat regional jet vs. a 300-seat 767. But even for the exact same plane—a standard 737, say—a low-fare carrier flying 900 miles could pay perhaps half as much as a legacy carrier making the same trip (due to the difference in fares).

No other country of any consequence pays for ATC in this crazy-quilt way. As Vaughn Cordle and I pointed out in a 2005 Reason Foundation study, only 20 tiny countries out of 180 listed by ICAO do not charge directly for ATC services (examples are Bahamas, Gambia, Namibia, Somalia, and Togo)—along with the United States. Every significant developed country—all of Europe, Canada, Latin America, nearly all of Asia, Australia, and New Zealand—charge ATC fees. (See Table 4 in the study, at http://reason.org/news/show/resolving-the-crisis-in-air-tr.)

I will not waste any time joining those calling for patching up the ticket tax by extending it to ancillary airline fees. What we need instead is to replace the ticket tax with ATC charges, ideally paid directly to a revamped Air Traffic Organization, governed by a board representing all key aviation stakeholders.

The current FAA authorization bill was passed in 2003. And a comprehensive reauthorization bill is well past due – three years past due in fact. It is hard to believe that it has been seven years since the multitude of policies governing everything from air traffic control to runway safety to environmental sustainability have been updated. Picking out bits and pieces of “popular” provisions from the bill does not address the industry’s needs.

On Labor Day the President called for a $50 billion investment to renew and expand transportation infrastructure, including airport infrastructure. Inaction on the FAA Reauthorization bill has delayed thousands of important projects that keep aviation passengers safe and secure. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) noted in their 2010 Report Card for American Infrastructure that there is a projected $40.7 billion shortfall in airport funding to meet the infrastructure improvements that ASCE estimates will be needed over the next five years.

When Princeton’s Dr. Alan Blinder, former Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve Board, testified before the Senate Budget Committee last week he noted that “The jobs deficit is more urgent than the budget deficit.” Passing an FAA reauthorization bill this year will create 80,000 jobs via the $4 billion authorized for the Airport Improvement Program (AIP). Raising the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) user fee cap by $2.50, as proposed in the House bill, would create an additional 40,000 direct jobs nationwide without requiring one cent of federal spending. The indirect and induced jobs created from the new airport construction projects further add to the economic benefits in local communities from the increased AIP and PFC funding.

Congress needs to push this important legislation across the finish line to allow the aviation industry to plan for the future while putting people to work now improving our national aviation infrastructure.

Despite unanimous, bipartisan support earlier this year, including a 93-0 vote in the Senate in March, the FAA Reauthorization bill remains stuck in legislative limbo, caught up on parochial, non-safety-related issues that affect only a handful of states. These small-impact issues are preventing universally-supported, common-sense steps to NextGen contained in the larger bill from reaching the president’s desk. With time again running out on an extension, both chambers were forced to pass yet another extension last week, punting consideration of any comprehensive legislation until after the November elections.

We're up to 16 extensions now, which is extraordinarily frustrating for those of us in the aviation community. With a direct stake in the safety of the flying public, NATCA feels this urgent safety and modernization legislation is desperately needed if we are to continue to operate the world's best system in the safest and most efficient fashion possible.

At stake are many important aviation safety provisions, a plan for a more efficient air traffic control system through modernization initiatives, and the opportunity to create or sustain up to 300,000 jobs during this historic economic downturn.

The bill includes many safety-related provisions that must be enacted to truly address the safety of the system as a whole. NATCA is most concerned with one such provision, the stability of the air traffic controller workforce, which has a direct and profound impact on the safe movement and separation of aircraft in the National Airspace System.

Last month marked 29 years since the PATCO controllers’ strike. In the years following that event, thousands of new hires entered the FAA. This group of the most experienced, veteran controllers began to reach retirement eligibility (25 years of service or 20 years of service and 50 years of age) in large numbers between 2005 and 2008. Then, the FAA, under the last administration, gave these controllers an incentive to retire by unilaterally imposing work rules and pay cuts - erasing a combined 46,000 years of experience in the process.

In fiscal year 2008 alone, at the height of this mass exodus, nearly 10 percent of the workforce was lost to attrition. But in fiscal year 2009, veteran controllers watched as President Obama won the election, took office and brought NATCA and the FAA back to the contract table under a fair collective bargaining process, and total attrition dropped by 58 percent.

The percentage of retirement-eligible controllers who left the job also dropped 58 percent from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2009. This workforce stabilization translates into increased safety margins because the most experienced controllers are electing to stay on the job longer to work with and teach the more than 4,000 trainees, passing along their experiences and wisdom. The FAA, under the fairly negotiated terms of the current contract, is also inviting controllers back into a collaborative partnership to improve the safety of the system and to safely develop and deploy NextGen. As recently as April, the DOT Inspector General told a House panel that the FAA was spending $14 million a month on the problems with ERAM, the name of the new computer platform for the en route center environment. Today, NATCA is part of the team, collaborating with the FAA to solve the outstanding safety problems with the system and helping to put out a product that will not only ensure the deployment of a safer product, but will simultaneously save significant taxpayer money.

When the 2010 fiscal year began, more than one in six controllers was eligible to retire, according to the FAA. By 2014, 25 percent of the workforce will join them in becoming eligible to retire, further necessitating a permanent process to ensure stability in their safety-critical workplaces.

Again, nearly three-fourths of the lawmakers voting on House and Senate versions of the FAA bill have already agreed that the way to permanently ensure a fair NATCA-FAA collective bargaining process and avoid future disputes and future disruptions to the stability of the workforce is to change the law – Title 49 of the U.S. Code. All that’s missing is final passage of the compromise version of the FAA reauthorization bill.

This is the final countdown to ensure that our NAS becomes even safer and more efficient. This bill affects all segments of aviation, from General Aviation to airports to manufacturers and, most of all, the flying public. We as aviation community members are seeing our patience depleted after waiting four years for this legislation that is so critical to the safety and future of the NAS.

The time for excuses is over. Once and for all, it’s time for this bill to be sent to the President. The Senate must act in the upcoming post-election session. The future of the NAS is most definitely at stake.