Air Traffic Control Is No Place to Scrimp : Congressional cost cutters could put the lives of millions of travelers at risk
If you travel by air between Central California and Oregon or in the air corridor stretching from eastern Nevada out over the Pacific Ocean, chances are that the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control facility in Oakland helps guide your plane. Oakland, one of the busiest flight communications centers in the nation, last year aided the pilots of 515,000 flights, keeping them on course and separated from one another in increasingly crowded and dangerous skies.
However, earlier this month, flight crews who depend on the Oakland center’s navigation systems found themselves flying blind because a massive power failure crippled ground-to-air radar and radio communications. The hourlong blackout left pilots of 70 aircraft scrambling for directions while more than 100 other planes were grounded and air traffic patterns were disrupted across the country.
The FAA promises a thorough investigation that will lead to changes intended to prevent a recurrence. It is focusing on the design and maintenance of two backup generators.
Following a series of computer malfunctions in Chicago last month, the FAA also promised to speed replacement of aging air traffic control computers in five cities--Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Washington, Cleveland and New York.
Unfortunately, incidents involving power failures or computer breakdowns are nothing new. There are about 2,000 documented power outages every year. And while they are rarely as serious as the system breakdown in Oakland, it is clear that the nation’s air traffic control system is not keeping up with the demands for new equipment and technology. Witness the 1950s-era, vacuum-tube radar equipment that remains in use in some installations at Los Angeles International Airport.
Whether the situation is a result of bad management, outdated procurement rules, excessive regulation or a combination of the three, it begs for change. Certainly there are no shortage of ideas on how to fix the problem. Competing proposals include the Clinton Administration’s plan to reconstitute the air traffic control system as a semiprivate entity and congressional calls for privatizing it altogether or turning the FAA into an independent government agency separate from the Department of Transportation.
It appears that the House and Senate are determined go ahead with deep budget cuts to force the issue. But a slash-first, ask-questions-later attitude won’t improve safety.
That approach is not sound governance. And the risks are self-evident to the flying public: Scrimping on a system that handles 8 million commercial flights annually is foolhardy and dangerous.
