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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
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Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Sept. 17, 2007 / 5 Tishrei 5768

Turbulence Ahead: Think flying is bad now? It'll get much worse if America doesn't upgrade its air traffic control system

By John H. Fund


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | If you think there are more airport delays and cancellations than ever, you're right. The percentage of late flights has doubled since 2002. And as bad as things are now, they're about to get worse. The Federal Aviation Administration predicts there will be 36% more people flying by 2015. If the U.S. doesn't dramatically expand the capacity of its overburdened air traffic control system, the airlines won't be able to keep up with demand and ticket prices will skyrocket.


It ought to be an issue in the presidential campaign that the FAA isn't equipped to clean up this mess. "The FAA as currently structured is impossible to run efficiently," says Langhorne Bond, who ran the agency from 1977 to 1981. BusinessWeek reports the air traffic control network runs on software that is so outdated that there are only six programmers left in the U.S. who are able to update the code. The FAA's efforts to move to a satellite-based system have been plagued by cost overruns and performance shortfalls.


The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warns that if the U.S. doesn't do something dramatic to upgrade its aviation infrastructure, the results will be "devastating." Rationing is already rearing its head as airlines deal with capacity limits by eliminating marginal routes in order to focus on more-profitable ones.


In July, American Airlines announced it was pulling out of Stewart International Airport, a converted Air Force base north of New York City, which local residents once hoped would give them the option of avoiding crowded LaGuardia or JFK. The airline's two flights to Chicago were often full, but running them was uneconomical because of the limited number of landing slots at O'Hare International Airport and the congested airspace around Chicago. "The number of slots at Chicago is not a law of nature," says Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, who has published a study on commercial aviation reform. "It too is a function of how good — or bad — our air traffic control technology is."


Aviation consultant Mike Boyd says that we can expect airlines to pick up the pace of de facto rationing in the near future: "A lot of small and midsize communities are going to get unpleasant news in the months ahead. . . . Places like Binghamton [in upstate New York]? Forget it. They're going to be doomed."


Some 40 nations, including Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and Fiji, have taken their air traffic control systems out of their calcified government bureaucracies and created public-private partnerships or self-supporting public-sector corporations that can move more quickly and nimbly to meet challenges. A 2005 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded that under the new entities have made it possible "to implement modernization projects more efficiently," while "safety of air navigation systems has remained the same or improved."


Since 1996, planes in Canada have been controlled by Nav Canada, an independent user-owned corporation that has unsnarled Canadian airspace. Nav Canada pays for itself through user fees and has thus been able to invest vast sums in new technology while cutting overhead, increasing staffing and raising the salaries of controllers. Airline-related delays have declined and customer service improved.


Even air traffic controllers supported Canada's shift to a privatized system, agreeing that having a government agency ensuring safety while also promoting expansion of air travel was a conflict of interest. In the U.S., privatization isn't popular with the turf-protective Congress, but the alternative — building more runways — faces fierce environmental resistance, and even if overcome would take a decade to implement.


This month I ran into Sir Richard Branson while he was on a PR tour for his new Virgin America airline. He agreed that while customers may rave about Virgin's mood lighting and high-tech entertainment systems, it faces real obstacles if it can't deliver people to their destination on time. "It's one of our biggest challenges, and out of our control," he told me. But it doesn't have to be. Mr. Branson and other airline executives should get together and lobby Congress for a more rational system.


America went to the moon and is on the cutting-edge of much new technology. It's ironic that the U.S. is now a world laggard in adapting its air traffic control systems to a 21st Century economy.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor John H. Fund is author, most recently, of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)

Comment on this column by clicking here.

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© 2006, John H. Fund

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