Why You’re Stuck on the Airport Tarmac

The FAA earlier this year predicted a 45% increase in flight delays, and the agency has been pushing airlines to cut flights in particular to and from busy New York. Airlines have staffed up as they recover from pandemic disruption and try to meet increasing consumer demand. But cutting routes means fewer choices and higher fares for the long-suffering traveling public.

The FAA acknowledges that the New York area is at about 54% of its staffing target, versus the 80% average in other parts of the country. The New York area’s John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports weathered more than 41,000 delays related to staffing shortages in summer 2022.

The situation is “a direct result of the FAA’s own failure to solve long-running staff shortages,” as Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, ranking member on the Commerce Committee, said in a letter this spring to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. The Transportation Department inspector general last week scored FAA’s “limited efforts to ensure adequate controller staffing.”

The FAA years ago proposed redesigning New York’s air space, to include combining facilities to make controllers more efficient. That project crashed and burned thanks to political parochialism. New York Democrat Chuck Schumer in press releases touts his “fierce advocacy” in fighting an integrated facility that might have moved air-traffic controllers from Long Island and allowed more efficient staffing. He’s pandering to the flight-controllers union, and it’s too bad there’s no union representing Americans sitting in seat 36B.

This illustrates why the U.S. would benefit from spinning off air-traffic control from government, as countries such as Canada have done to salutary effect. Air-traffic control could rely on user fees, instead of taxes, and not be hostage to special-interest politics.

The FAA has also struggled to upgrade technology. A classic example is controllers passing around paper strips that track a flight. An FAA plan to roll out electronic flight strips at 49 major airports isn’t set to finish until 2029. Technology such as 360-degree cameras obviate the need to put every controller in a tower at the end of the runway. But the FAA has shown little interest in remote towers.

Under a private air-traffic regime, the FAA would be free to focus on its core mission: Safety regulation. That looks more urgent as near-misses happen more frequently at airports across the country. Air-traffic reform stalled in Congress under the Trump Administration thanks to opposition from hobbyist pilots and private aviation companies.

The idea dates back to Al Gore’s 1990s pitch for reinventing government. Mr. Buttigieg could revive his political fortunes by working with the GOP to make it a reality. As it is, he’ll take the heat for summer delays. Summer travel dysfunction doesn’t have to be inevitable. It’s the product of incompetent government.