Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“Those old-school airlines might have been luxurious, but those flights were unaffordable for the vast majority of Americans. If you lived back then, you wouldn’t be flying in style. You’d probably not be flying at all.”
https://reason.com/2026/01/22/flying-is-better-than-in-the-good-old-days-no-matter-how-luxurious-those-old-photos-look/
“Air traffic control (ATC) is too important to be vulnerable to politics. Around the world, governments have acknowledged this fact and depoliticized their ATC systems, beginning with the reformist Labor government of New Zealand in 1987. They removed the ATC system from their transport ministry and permitted the aviation user fees that had been paid to the government to instead be paid to the new Airways New Zealand.
It worked so well that within a decade, a dozen more governments had followed suit, realizing that ATC is essentially a public utility, analogous to electricity. A stream of ATC user-fee payments is a bondable revenue stream that has been utilized by ATC utilities to finance large-scale technology upgrades and consolidate aging ATC facilities into a smaller number of modern ones.
Today, roughly 100 countries receive their air traffic control services from user-funded utilities.”
https://reason.com/2025/11/05/americas-longest-government-shutdown-shows-why-we-must-free-air-traffic-control-from-politics/
“Today, more than 80 countries have air traffic control systems that are public utilities funded by user fees, allowing them to generate money quickly, issue revenue bonds, replace aging facilities, update their technology, and hire skilled staff while being directly accountable to customers. The U.S. is one of the few countries that hasn’t adopted this approach to air traffic control. The results are understaffing, outdated technology, and a lack of meaningful oversight—all combining to put travelers at risk.”
https://reason.com/2025/05/21/the-3-faa-failures-creating-a-dangerous-mess-in-the-skies/
“For years, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority warned Congress that the region’s airports were at capacity, DeFazio said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. But their pleas for restraint fell short among lawmakers, who voted to add more flights to an airport already struggling with its heavy load and a shortage of air traffic controllers caused by previous government shutdowns and pandemic-era hits to its workforce.
“Every senator in particular wants a nonstop flight to and from wherever they live,” said DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat. He noted that a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration passed last year added even more flights to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “The airport said, ‘Don’t do it.’ And they did it. So they added to what DCA said is already an overly congested and over-capacity airport.” (Congress has added more than 60 new flights to Reagan since 2000, over the objections of airport officials.)”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/31/defazio-plane-crash-blame-00201767
“Before deregulation, a cross-country flight could cost thousands of dollars (inflation adjusted) and would take all day. Afterward, travelers benefited from myriad choices that dropped prices and promoted innovation in scheduling and aircraft design.
It’s not as bougie to fly these days, but almost everyone can now afford to do it. Yet the nostalgia never ends. “The professor obviously never talked to passengers, pilots, flight crews, investors and airline executives,” author Rene Henry argued last year. “All were happy with regulation and the way things were.”
Of course, passengers, pilots, airline executives, and investors liked the old system. Passengers were usually wealthy or engaged in business travel. Airlines didn’t have to worry about upstart competitors. Investors were largely guaranteed a huge return. For the rest of Americans, well, they were stuck taking Greyhound or driving. The number of airline travelers increased from 383 million in 1970 to 4.4 billion today.”
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“Carter also signed laws deregulating trucking, rail, and telecommunications, which paved the way for transformative innovations that have vastly improved our lives. “He set up cabinet-level oversight councils to review the new agencies’ most important regulatory proposals and to encourage more cost-effective forms of regulation,” wrote Susan Dudley in an article appropriately title, “Jimmy Carter, The Great Deregulator.”
Many of us remember when Vice President Al Gore, who during a 1999 interview when he was running for president, boastfully said, “I took the initiative in creating the Internet” based on legislation he authored in Congress. Carter never claimed to help create the resulting technologies, which emanated from private-sector savants. But he helped enable everything from FedEx to the iPhone by dismantling government rules that impeded these developments.
“Freight deregulation was key to our modern, robust supply chains where customers can find just about anything in retail stores across the country, and next-day shipping is the norm,” explained the transportation journal Freight Waves in its remembrance of Carter.
Many progressives and populists now complain about the results of these emergent industries as they ramp up antitrust efforts and wax poetically about an ideal past that never existed. Criticize Carter if you choose, but much of the progress we take for granted would never have emerged without deregulation. He wasn’t only a fine man, but a notable president.”
https://reason.com/2025/01/10/thank-jimmy-carter-for-cheap-airfare/
“About a decade ago, the FAA developed a plan to address the understaffing at N90 (and perhaps regain some level of management control). The idea was to shift responsibility for approaches and departures for the five New Jersey airports to a well-staffed facility in Philadelphia. This would ease the extent of the controller shortage at N90, by reducing the air traffic they manage by about one-third.
The controllers’ union branch at N90 declared war on the plan, backed by Schumer and his New York congressional allies. So it sat on the shelf for years—until a new FAA Administrator, Mike Whittaker, took office last year. Additional discussions with airlines and the national controllers’ union leadership led to agreement (at last) on this sensible reform, set to take effect on July 28, 2024. On July 17, 17 controllers who’d been slated to transfer to Philadelphia refused to relocate. But 14 others volunteered, and another 10 agreed to a temporary relocation to assist in training the Philly controllers. The airlines (and I) breathed a sigh of relief. This long-standing problem was on the way to being solved, though it would take a few years to get Philly fully up to speed.
But—wouldn’t you know it—on August 2, Schumer, along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D–N.Y.) and five House members from New York, sent the FAA a letter demanding the plan be rescinded. Airlines serving the three main N.Y./N.J. airports support the plan, knowing that it will take a year or two before the transition is completed and FAA flight restrictions can be lifted. A senior airline executive told Politico, “Doing nothing to fix the most chronically understaffed and also busiest airspace in the system was not an option. Long-term, this is the most effective solution.”
Most Americans are unaware that this kind of political meddling is rare in most developed countries. Since 1987, more than 60 countries have depoliticized their air traffic control systems. Instead of being part of a government transportation agency funded by the legislative body, these systems have been converted into self-supporting public utilities. They charge airlines and business jets for their services and can issue revenue bonds to finance facility replacements or expansions. (In contrast, the FAA depends solely on whatever Congress appropriates each year and is not allowed to issue bonds.)
Freeing U.S. airspace from political micromanagement has been proposed many times over the past 50 years but has never come close to happening. The latest effort (between 2016 and 2018) got an air traffic corporation bill through the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, but it went no further. The large coalition (airlines, controllers’ unions, pilots’ unions, and others) that got us that far no longer exists. But someday, our anachronistic system of managing air traffic will be depoliticized as a self-supporting air traffic utility. Perhaps then it can build its way back to being the world’s best, instead of just the world’s largest, air traffic management system.”
https://reason.com/2024/08/23/how-political-meddling-in-new-york-and-new-jersey-causes-airline-delays-in-the-entire-u-s/
“The Federal Aviation Administration, which has an operational monopoly on America’s technologically antiquated flight-control system, does not have enough air traffic controllers to meet consumer air travel demand, particularly in the New York City area. It’s the old, you-had-one-job meme, only this time ruining thousands of holiday plans, business trips, and family reunions.”
“massive flight cancelations from are a good reminder of what a raw deal those bailouts were for taxpayers and consumers. Rather than allow the shock of the pandemic to create some needed disruption in the passenger airline industry, Congress chose to prop up a messy status quo.
The $7 billion Southwest received from three COVID relief bills allowed ineffective practices at the airline to persist. Allowing the competitive pressures to more freely do their work might have spurred some productive change within Southwest.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/explainer-why-u-flights-were-142321962.html