by Craig Fuller
President & CEO
Aircraft Owners & Pilots Association
A few weeks ago, in a moment of exceptional cross-party accord, both the House and Senate passed legislation giving the FAA more freedom in how to handle spending, and more important, the spending cuts required under sequestration.
The unanimous vote in the Senate and the overwhelming majority in the House sent a clear message that the FAA should be allowed to put safety of flight first. And the FAA did…sort of.
The immediate action the FAA took with its newfound freedom was to stop planned furloughs, keeping air traffic controllers, safety inspectors, and thousands of others on the job. And that’s great news for pilots, aircraft operators, businesses, and the flying public. These FAA professionals are a key reason why the United States has the safest, most efficient air transport system in the world.
It’s what the FAA didn’t do that had many people scratching their heads. The FAA did not immediately announce that it would rethink its plans to close 149 contract towers at general aviation airports nationwide.
Numerous members of Congress made it clear that the reason they granted the FAA flexibility was to keep FAA employees on the job and to keep towers open. Forty-one senators sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and FAA Administrator Michael Huerta stating that, “By providing up to $253 million in funding authority — far above the amount required to prevent furloughs — congressional intent is clear: the FAA should prevent the slated closure of 149 contract towers by fully funding the contract tower program.”
And yet, other than to say that they were reviewing the provisions of the funding legislation, both the FAA and the Department of Transportation kept mum about the future of the towers.
Municipalities affected by the planned tower closures filed a federal lawsuit against the FAA in the Ninth Circuit. AOPA provided an amicus brief focusing on the flawed process for determining which towers to close.
Then on May 10, the FAA announced that it would keep the towers open after all. It’s a good decision and one that the entire aviation community worked diligently to bring about.
Of course, the action keeping the towers open is really just a reprieve in the ongoing battle over what and how to cut spending in the face of sequestration.
This autumn, the cuts will begin anew unless action is taken to bring sequestration to an end. We can only hope that this reprieve will give the FAA and others the time to make a careful and thoughtful evaluation of the potential consequences of spending cuts.
Our national air transportation system is too important to be a pawn in a game of political chess. There’s no room for brinksmanship when we’re dealing with a system that daily affects millions of lives and produces billions in annual economic impact. Count on AOPA to continue the fight for the freedom to fly and the safety of our aviation system.
