Aviation Policy News: Protecting air traffic control and travelers from the next government shutdown

In this issue:

• Protecting aviation from the next shutdown
• Time to retire the P word
• NASA’s huge risk in Artemis II mission
• Airport privatization back on Canada’s agenda
• Protecting passengers from defective regulation
• Carry-on bags and emergency evacuation
• News Notes
• Quotable Quotes

Protecting Aviation from the Next Shutdown  

The longest federal government shutdown has finally been ended by Congress. Air travel will likely take weeks to recover, in part due to an even larger shortage of air traffic controllers due to the higher-than-usual number of controller retirements during the past month and a half.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s Air Traffic Organization was already far short of standard air traffic controller staffing, and the next few years will be even worse. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says that an average of 15 to 20 controllers retired per day during the shutdown. If that’s the case, multiply 15 retirements by 43 days and you get 645 fewer controllers post-shutdown. Therefore, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is likely to retain some flight restrictions indefinitely based on the post-shutdown level of controller staffing at towers, TRACONs, and high-altitude centers.

The shutdown may be over, but now is the time for policymakers to think seriously about protecting air travel from the next government shutdown, because there are sure to be more. The most effective means to that end is to do what nearly 100 other countries have done since 1987: de-politicize air traffic control (ATC). What the vast majority of those countries have done is to remove ATC from the government’s budget by (1) separating the air traffic control provider from direct government funding, and (2) enabling it to charge airlines and business jets International Civil Aviation Organization-compliant weight-distance charges for all flights.

Policymakers and opinion leaders should understand that U.S. airlines and business jets pay those user fees whenever they fly in non-U.S. airspace. The business jet lobby group, the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA), pulls out all the stops to prevent its members from facing those fees in the United States because they currently pay only a very small fuel tax that covers about 10% of the cost of the air traffic control services they receive. As an Aug. 10 video editorial from The New York Times explained, whenever an airline passenger pays the ticket tax (which is the FAA’s primary revenue source), part of that tax is used to cross-subsidize business jets.

The other obstacle to modernizing U.S. air traffic control is, alas, Congress. It has twice rejected serious proposals to depoliticize our ATC system: once by rejecting the Clinton administration’s proposal to create a federal ATC utility and again under the first Trump administration, where a Republican proposal for a nonprofit ATC corporation modeled on the very successful Nav Canada didn’t move forward.

Perhaps the air travel chaos of this historically long federal government shutdown will prompt Congress to think more seriously about making air traffic control shutdown-proof, as many other countries have done.

As The Wall Street Journal editorialized on Nov. 5:

“This is a ludicrous way to run the air transportation system of any country, much less the richest and most powerful one in the history of the planet. The answer is to hand off the job of air traffic control to a nonprofit funded by user fees instead of taxes. This model is already present in Canada and elsewhere, so it isn’t some pie-in-the-sky idea. President Trump backed such a plan during his first term, but parochial opposition kept it grounded.”

Former U.S. Department of Transportation Undersecretary for Policy Jeff Shane reminded me several months ago of a 2007 bill introduced in both houses of Congress to accomplish some of what other countries have done. It would have enabled ATC user fees instead of current aviation excise taxes (notably the ticket tax and aviation fuel taxes) and, via a kind of “permanent appropriations” process, enable the user-fee revenues to go directly to the ATC system. It would also have provided borrowing authority for the FAA to use to finance ATC capital investments. The Senate bill was S.1076, 110th Congress.

That approach is not my preference, but it would be a major improvement over today’s “ludicrous” status quo for America’s air traffic control system. We need to take air traffic control out of the federal budget, insulating it from the next government shutdown.

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Time to Retire the P word

Both friends and foes of air traffic control reform frequently refer to proposed changes as “privatization.” In an abstract, academic sense, shifting a function from the public sector to some form of non-government management can be dubbed “privatization.” But that word has acquired a serious negative meaning when it comes to air traffic control. This dates back to the initial efforts by then-Rep. Bill Shuster, who chaired the House Transportation & Infrastructure (T&I) Committee last decade, to craft 2017 legislation to replace the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization (ATO) with a nonprofit, stakeholder-governed corporation modeled after Nav Canada. This plan originated from a working group (of which I was a part) of the Business Roundtable. I also served as a (non-paid) subject-matter expert on this effort for the House T&I Committee. In parallel, a working group on air traffic control reform at the Eno Center for Transportation came up with a similar recommendation.

By the time the House T&I Committee released the first draft of its nonprofit air traffic corporation bill, the proposed stakeholder board was a disaster. The 13 stakeholders were to include four seats representing the major airlines, three representing general and business aviation, and six others representing air travelers and others. This led to a business-jet/private-pilot media campaign denouncing the bill as a takeover of ATC by the big airlines. NBAA bankrolled a new organization called Alliance for Aviation Across America (AAAA) that denounced the bill as having “a private board dominated by the big airlines” that would short-change rural states and small airports.

Despite a later version of the bill having a far more balanced set of stakeholders (including regional airlines and airports, and provisions ensuring the continuation of the Contract Tower program), the same AAAA talking points continued about a big-airline takeover and making profits at the expense of the rest of aviation. And this likely made it impossible for there to be a companion bill in the Senate.

When I review recent reports from organizations opposed to separating air traffic control from the FAA, they consistently label this change “privatization” and imply that it would be a profit-making private company.

A 2015 report from the Center for American Progress defines what they are against as “a private entity with a profit motive.” Yet the same report assumed that a privatized ATC entity would require “a steady stream of tax revenue to cover operational costs” and procurement of improved infrastructure. It went on to state that this would be “a bold attempt to carve out operations and procurement activities along with all or most of [Aviation Trust Fund] funding while dumping responsibility for remaining FAA functions onto taxpayers.” It also assumed airline control of the privatized entity, assuming that they would seek to ensure funding did not go to a major hub of a competing airline.

A more recent 2025 piece from “In the Public Interest” repeats claims such as, “Privatizing ATC would hand significant control of the airspace to the major airlines, allowing them to consolidate their power and dictate rules that prioritize their bottom lines over the public interest.”

In short, the meme is out there that “privatization” means “profits” and “control by airlines.” This does not reflect the situation in any of the nearly 100 countries that now receive air traffic control services from air navigation service providers (ANSPs) organized as public utilities, the vast majority of which are government corporations funded by ATC user fees.

That is why I switched my terminology several years ago to “public utility,” because that is what these entities are. In a U.S. context, they are analogous to electric utilities (including the Tennessee Valley Authority, which gets its funding from its electricity customers, not from Congress). TVA also issues long-term bonds to finance major capital improvements.

I urge fellow supporters of air traffic control public utilities to dump the ‘P’ word and start referring to public utilities as I wrote in my study, “Air traffic control as a public utility.” That is what the Clinton administration proposed in 1994, as its largest “reinventing government” project, the U.S. Air Traffic Services (USATS) corporation. It was to be funded by air traffic control user fees and regulated at arm’s length by the safety regulator, the FAA. I remember testifying in favor of USATS, but it never got beyond a single House committee presentation.

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The Huge Risk in NASA’s Artemis II Mission

As reported by Eric Berger in Ars Technica, NASA plans to launch its Artemis II mission early next month. Its giant, once-flown Space Launch System (SLS) rocket will launch its only-once-flown Orion capsule with four astronauts on board for a trip around the Moon and return to Earth. On the only previous launch (without crew) Orion’s heat shield partly disintegrated during re-entry. Once NASA engineers analyzed the damage, they decided that the fix would be to perform the next Orion re-entry on a different trajectory on which heat would not build up as much. But this has not been tested.

That bothers Casey Handmer, who has posted a very long critique of Orion, which I read in preparation for writing this article. Who is Casey Handmer, and why do I take him seriously? He received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech, worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and later founded Terraform Industries to make synthetic natural gas. Several space policy experts that I know and respect think he’s very credible.

His lengthy piece presents a technical case arguing that the Orion capsule is poorly designed, particularly in its heat shield. After many detailed pages, he summarizes Orion as follows:

• Orion does not have a “reference mission,” and Orion is not needed to go to the Moon.
• Orion is hugely expensive; the Orion program spends more in a year than SpaceX spent in total on its first space capsule.
• Orion has been delayed endlessly; in 2013 it was so far behind schedule that it could not be included in any serious space exploration architecture. And 12 years later, it has still not flown humans.
• Orion is irredeemably unsafe; the systems engineering was compromised from the beginning. Most obvious is the flawed heat shield. But nearly every other subsystem is either unstable, untested, or unfit.

Obviously, Handmer thinks it is wrong to risk four human lives on this very flawed vehicle. Remember, both the SLS launch rocket and Orion have flown only once. Contrast this with SpaceX’s approach. It has flown 11 Starship spacecraft thus far, none with humans on board. Each mission (and I’ve watched them all) is intended to test different design changes, flight tracks, and other details. Each one is a learning experience that leads to continuous improvements. A good overview of this approach is Irene Katz’s two-page article on Mission 11 of Starship Version 2. (“Next Up: Starship Take 3,” Irene Katz, Aviation Week, Oct. 27-Nov. 9, 2025) It’s a great illustration of SpaceX’s learning by doing.

NASA’s approach typifies the central planning “one best way”. It comes up with a concept and works extensively to fine-tune it on paper. It ends up being so costly that multiple test flights are unaffordable, so after just one SLS/Orion launch, it’s ready to fly with humans. That is an extremely risky way to proceed, but at $4 billion per launch, NASA has painted itself into a corner.

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Airport Privatization Back on the Agenda in Canada

Canada’s federal government has once again raised the subject of airport privatization, which was discussed briefly last year, but did not go anywhere. The government’s aim is to attract private capital to invest in the country’s airports, both the four major hubs (Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver) and also the larger regional airports. The government is looking for a way for equity investors, such as pension funds and infrastructure investment funds, to upgrade these airports.

What’s different this time, per a recent brief by Jody Aldcorn and Ken Silverthorn of McCarthy Tetrault that crossed my screen recently, is that today’s federal government has deficit constraints, the Canadian Airports Council is open to reforms, and Canadian pension funds are interested in airport investment at home, as they have been doing globally for many years.

Back in 1992, when the national government owned all the principal airports, it began devolving control to local non-profit airport authorities—but required that they pay annual rent to the federal government. The rent is a percentage of each airport’s annual gross revenue, and can be as high as 12%. The airport authorities hate this because they have to charge large fees to airport passengers, which makes air travel more expensive, on average, than in the United States.

When this subject arose last year, I had several suggestions, which I will repeat here, since I think they still make sense. The airport authorities want to get rid of the annual rent payments, but that would reduce a long-standing revenue source of the federal government. My suggestion was—and is—for the federal government to enact legislation enabling local authorities to opt out of annual rent payments if they enter into a long-term public-private partnership lease with an investor group (potentially including pension funds) and the investor group then agrees to compensate the federal government for the loss of rents from that airport. Thereafter, the airport authority and the P3 group would develop plans for modernization/expansion, etc., financed by equity and debt, as Canadian pension funds are involved worldwide.

This is potentially a win-win for the federal government, the airport authorities, and would-be airport investors, including Canada’s outstanding public pension funds, with their long track record of investing equity in airports worldwide.

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Protecting Consumers from Defective Consumer Protection Regulation
By Marc Scribner

Federal authority to police unfair and deceptive airline practices was first established in 1938 and has been largely unchanged since 1958, when consumer protections were extended to sellers of airline tickets. The commercial aviation industry has changed a great deal, as have consumer protection best practices that apply to most other businesses. In recent years, the outdated aviation consumer protection authority has been wielded to regulate air transportation in a variety of questionable ways, which are threatening the gains consumers realized following the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Fortunately, the U.S. Department of Transportation recently proposed a rule aimed at modernizing aviation consumer protections for the 21st century and protecting consumers from defective regulation.

The Department of Transportation’s aviation consumer protection authority long predates the DOT itself. Its basic structure was enacted by Congress as part of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, which included protections against unfair or deceptive airline practices modeled on those contained in the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act passed months earlier in 1938. The Federal Aviation Act of 1958, which established the FAA, also extended aviation consumer protections to ticket agents. Since then, the statute has largely been unchanged (49 U.S.C. § 41712).

In contrast, the FTC’s authority to police against unfair or deceptive practices outside the air transportation industry has evolved significantly since 1938. These changes were driven by court decisions and internal practice in the decades that followed the enactment of the FTC’s consumer protection statute, an approach that was summarized[?] in the FTC’s 1980 Policy Statement on Unfairness.

Congress codified FTC’s modern practices in the 1994 FTC Act amendments, which importantly added three standards of proof to the statutory definition of “unfairness” (15 U.S.C. § 45). For conduct to qualify as unfair under the law, it must be (1) “likely to cause substantial injury to consumers,” (2) not “reasonably avoidable by consumers themselves,” and (3) “not outweighed by countervailing benefits to consumers or to competition.” This updated definition of “unfairness” was also included in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010, which covers the enforcement duties of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (12 U.S.C. § 5531). Thus, a consensus on what “unfairness” means exists in every  federal consumer protection context other than commercial aviation.

While bipartisan recognition of the problem of ill-defined “unfairness” exists in virtually every other federal consumer protection context, Congress has so far not moved to reform the Department of Transportation’s similar aviation consumer protection authority. This failure to act has enabled regulators in recent years to engage in a variety of re-regulatory activities, including new restrictions on airfare advertising that prohibit government taxes and fees from being “displayed prominently” (14 C.F.R. § 399.84(a)), outlawing true nonrefundable ticketing (14 C.F.R. § 259.5(b)(4)), which puts upward price pressure on airfares due to the forced risk transfer from consumers to air carriers, and an inflexible tarmac-delay rule (14 C.F.R. § 259.4) suspected of increasing flight cancellations—particularly at smaller and more-rural airports.

Each of these aviation consumer protection regulations has been criticized as harming consumers, some with stronger evidence than others. But without the FTC-style standards of proof and evidentiary hearing procedures, the scales were tipped in favor of regulators.

Despite congressional inaction, DOT moved to bring the aviation consumer protection in line with FTC-style definitions and procedures in Dec. 2020. While this rule certainly improved airline and ticket agents’ defensive positions against allegations of unfair or deceptive practices, it would have required regulators to explain themselves along the way and give consumers better insight into how decisions that affect them are made. In this way, it should be understood as promoting regulatory quality and consistency in enforcement.

But the Biden administration moved quickly to reverse these reforms. Pursuant to an executive order, it published a rule in Feb. 2022 modifying procedures for discretionary aviation consumer protection regulatory proceedings in several ways that watered down process rigors. This change in policy opened the door for future discretionary rulemaking guided more by political whims than careful empirical analysis. DOT’s recent history of aviation consumer protection rulemakings suggests that past regulatory analysis was not sufficiently robust to avoid perverse harm to consumers.

The good news is that the new Trump administration is seeking to reinstate its previous reforms. Earlier this year, Reason Foundation urged DOT to restore the aviation consumer protection hearing procedures established in the Dec. 2020 rule. On Oct. 30, DOT published a proposed rule to do just that. While this latest shift in policy is welcome, it underscores the need for congressional action. A future administration can reverse these reforms just like the Biden administration did. Amending the aviation consumer protection statute, as Reason Foundation has recommended, would promote aviation consumer protection regulation and enforcement that actually protects consumers, regardless of who sits in the White House.

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Overhead Bags and Cabin Evacuation

Air travelers’ dependence on bringing travel luggage on board and stashing it in overhead bins is a serious problem. Not only does it increase boarding time; it also hinders emergency evacuations. As Sean Broderick reported in Aviation Week (Oct. 27-Nov. 9), a detailed study of evacuations revealed that retrieving bags from overhead makes it impossible to evacuate the cabin in the standard 90 seconds.

The study was carried out at the University of Greenwich. The researchers built a model so they could run thousands of scenarios, modeling a 180-seat narrowbody airliner with FAA-standard exits. In the base-case scenarios in which no passengers retrieved luggage, the median evacuation time was 121 seconds—well above the 90-second requirement. In the worst-case scenarios with many passengers retrieving luggage, total evacuation time averaged 199 seconds, with an average of 63 passengers left behind after 90 seconds. I note that in most scenarios, not all exits were modeled as usable, which is also realistic.

These are dismaying findings. The 90-second standard should not be increased, given the danger of fire and toxic fumes entering the cabin in many cases. So what kind of measures would improve evacuation times? Banning carry-on luggage (or locking the overheads until safe arrival at the gate) is not likely to be considered feasible. But what about providing economic incentives?

One reason so much luggage is brought on board is that airlines charge a lot for checked bags but charge nothing for carry-ons. What if checked luggage fees were cut in half? (I’d say eliminated, but airlines depend on that revenue.) But suppose they also started charging for most or all luggage carried on? We’ve seen the reverse of that when Southwest recently began charging for checked bags, leading to a large increase in carry-ons. So if airlines started charging for any carry-on larger than an under-seat briefcase, requiring a paid carry-on tag affixed to each such carry-on, some fraction of roll-aboard suitcases would end up in the hold, rather than in overhead bins.

This change should reduce boarding delays due to fewer suitcases being stored overhead and also improve evacuation times. Sounds like a winner to me.

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News Notes

Trump Renominates Isaacman for NASA Administrator
President Trump has formally re-nominated former astronaut Jared Isaacman to be the new NASA administrator. The nomination took place a few days after Politico unveiled Isaacman’s 62-page non-public concept paper for re-inventing the agency, which appears to reflect the ideas he discussed with Aviation Week reporter Irene Klotz’s two-page interview with Isaacman, summarized in the July 2025 issue of this newsletter. Politico quotes him as saying the document’s vision is “fully consistent with what I discussed in my Senate Hearing and in my responses to the Commerce Committee’s questions for the record. And I stand by it.”

Iridium Plans GPS Alternative on a Chip
Iridium Communications has announced an 8mm x 8mm chip that can provide position/navigation/timing information based on PNT data from its 66 low-earth-orbit communications satellites, reported Graham Warwick in Aviation Daily (Nov. 4). Iridium is seeking partners to conduct beta trials of the chip. CEO Matt Desch pointed out that the Iridium signal is 1,000 times stronger than GPS signals. The company plans to license the chip and PNT service to value-added resellers such as Collins Aerospace, Honeywell, and Skytrac Systems.

Archer Leases Hawthorne Airport for LA Air Taxi Market
Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) startup Archer Aviation has paid $126 million to lease, for 45 years, Hawthorne Airport for its planned Los Angeles air taxi service and to test various new aviation technologies. The airport is owned by the City of Hawthorne. It was built in the 1920s and was once known as Jack Northrop Field. It is three miles from LAX and close to major attractions, including SoFi Stadium, The Forum, and Intuit Dome.

SpaceX Details Progress on Starship as Lunar Lander
In response to criticism from acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy, SpaceX released (Oct. 30th) a detailed progress report on its Starship-based Human Landing System for the agency’s Artemis III mission. It reported upcoming in-space trials of in-flight refueling and the development of a Starship HLS crew cabin. In addition, SpaceX issued the following statement: “In response to the latest calls [from NASA], we’ve shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the Moon while simultaneously improving crew safety.” This information comes from a Garrett Reim article in Aerospace Daily & Defense Report.

Beta Raises $1 Billion on the New York Stock Exchange
In an initial public offering, Beta Technologies sold 29.9 million shares at $34 per share. That puts Beta in the same funding category as Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation, all three now having each raised close to $3 billion. Beta is developing two versions of its Alia aircraft—conventional takeoff and vertical takeoff. It expects FAA Part 23 Type certification for Alia CTOL by late 2026 or early 2027, followed by Alia VTOL certification in late 2027 or early 2028. Beta says it has firm orders for 131 CTOL and 158 VTOL aircraft.

Macquarie Seeks Control of London City Airport
Infralogic reported (Oct. 15) that Macquarie Asset Management has reached an agreement to acquire a 50% stake in London City Airport from two Canadian pension funds: Alberta Investment Management Corporation and OMERS. That is in addition to its previous purchase of a 25% stake from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, giving Macquarie 75% control of London’s third-largest airport. Earlier this year Macquarie acquired a 55% stake in Bristol Airport and a 26.5% stake in Birmingham Airport.

Quiet Supersonic Jet Makes First Flight
NASA’s X-59 Quest supersonic test aircraft made its first flight on Oct. 28 from Palmdale to Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert. The one-hour and 7-minute flight was at subsonic speeds between 170 and 250 knots. The X-59 is designed to reach Mach 1.4 and an altitude of 55,000 ft. During the next year, the flight envelope will be expanded in altitude and speed, after which acoustic measurements will be made to find out how quiet the aircraft is at various altitudes and (especially) supersonic speeds. A third phase will focus on community response to X-59 flights.

Blue Origin Opens New Glenn Factory at the Cape
The Orlando Sentinel’s Richard Tribou reported on the opening of a $3 billion manufacturing plant for the company’s New Glenn launch rocket. It provided a media tour of the factory, which will produce workhorse reusable New Glenn launch vehicles and also the version selected by NASA for its Human Landing System, to be called Blue Moon Mark 2. It is scheduled for the Artemis V mission, following SpaceX’s moon-lander version of Starship for Artemis III and IV. Blue Origin already had another plant nearby producing the uncrewed Mark 1 version.

New York Times Highlights Collegiate Controller Schools
Reporter Karoun Demirjian interviewed administrators at some 20 colleges that offer an FAA-vetted air traffic controller training curriculum. This program has not been widely known, despite its longevity and the addition of nine more colleges in the past year or two. I was pleased to learn that DOT Secretary Sean Duffy freed up enough FAA funds to keep these college courses in operation during the federal shutdown. That is a wise investment, given the increase in controller retirements during the shutdown. On the other hand, Demirjian reports that hardly any students in these programs have been trained to work in FAA’s high-altitude centers, which are considered the toughest assignments for new controllers.

Microwave Imaging Will Speed Travelers Through TSA Screening
MIT Lincoln Laboratory spent years developing a new kind of walk-through screening device for TSA checkpoints, to replace current walk-through metal detectors. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded the project. The prototype uses antennas on flat panels that send out low-energy radio waves to reflect any hidden objects. This creates an instant image that the TSA agent scrutinizes. The technology has been licensed to Liberty Defense, and under the name “Hexwave” it was approved by DHS in 2024 to replace conventional walk-through metal detectors in TSA PreCheck lanes.

SpaceX Getting Close to Launching Starship Version 3
Starship Version 3 will be the successor to the Starships that have continued to provide huge amounts of data on operational performance this year. The first V3 launch is planned to, among other things, be the first to test orbital propellant transfer—a key factor in planned longer-term Starship flights, including its Human Landing System for NASA Moon landings.

Venice Airport Operator SAVE Is Being Bought by Infrastructure Funds
A consortium led by infrastructure investor Ardian has reached an agreement to acquire Italian airport operator SAVE, whose portfolio includes the Brescia, Venice, Verona, and Treviso airports, plus a stake in Belgian airport Charleroi. Being bought out under this transaction are infrastructure funds DWS Infrastructure and InfraVia Capital Partners. Infralogic estimates the deal is worth €1.1 billion.

JSX Introducing Turboprops
Public charter operator JSX is planning to introduce turboprop aircraft to its fleet; all other U.S. carriers have phased them out. JSX plans to add ATR 42-600s and possibly ATR 72-600s. JSX aims to provide the same kind of service offered by its small-jet flights. Its current all-jet business is up 30% over last year, with yields continuing to rise, reports Chris Sloan in Aviation Week (Sept. 29-Oct. 12). A number of legacy airlines are sponsoring legislation to treat public charters the same as scheduled (Part 121) carriers. Two airlines—United and JetBlue—are investors in JSX and are not supporting that bill.

Philippines Plans to Privatize Nine Regional Airports
Infralogic reports (Oct. 8) that its government plans to privatize nine regional airports, via two separate bundles. Both the Asian Development Bank and the International Finance Corporation are advisers for the planned auctions.

Iraq Selects Winner for Baghdad Airport
With bids from both Dublin Airport Authority and Corporacion America as finalists, the government in October selected the latter. The International Finance Corporation will negotiate with the Corporacion America consortium. The plan calls for the winner to construct a new passenger terminal (estimated at $400-$600 million) as part of the 25-year concession.

Error in Last Month’s Issue
Not one but two aviation professionals (whom I know) pointed out an error in last month’s lead article. The 17-country ATC utility in Africa is ASECNA, which I know. I plead guilty to sloppy proofreading.

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Quotable Quotes

“The reliance on overworked controllers is particularly dangerous because the FAA relies on outdated technologies that it has struggled to upgrade or replace. As in so many other areas, the United States has fallen behind other nations that use more-modern technologies to guide more airplane safely through crowded parts of the sky. . . . One possible corrective is to remove the government from its role. Other nations—including Australia, Canade, and Germany—have created stand-alone corporations, funded by industry, to operate their air traffic control systems. The FAA already collects a large portion of its funding directly from the industry. It could be fully funded in the same way. . . . Shutdowns cause unpredictable and lasting damage. If our elected representatives once again fail to perform their basic responsibilities, and the government again shuts down, other things will break—and the consequences will be with us for a long time.”
—Binyamin Appelbaum, “Why Is Your Flight Always Delayed? Blame Government Shutdowns“, The New York Times, Sept. 29, 2025

“Lack of competition in the airline industry stems from antitrust law enforcement. That’s what former Delta and Northwest CEO Richard Anderson suggested on the Airlines Confidential podcast this week, when he joined ex Wall Street Journal airline reporter Scott McCartney and ex-American CEO Doug Parker. Spirit Airlines is in bankruptcy. They’ve already said they’re giving up half their fleet. The whole thing was going to be flying if they’d been acquired by JetBlue, but the government stopped that. The Biden administration said they wanted those planes all flying under an ultra-low-cost model, and that’s why they blocked the JetBlue merger that would have saved Spirit.”
—Gary Leff, View from the Wing, Oct. 12, 2025

“The Artemis III mission, a key priority for NASA acting Administrator Sean Duffy, is set to launch in 2027. But given the high-stakes engineering feats planned for the mission, both people inside and outside NASA say that’s impossible—making it more likely by the day that China beats the U.S. back to the Moon. The program’s tight schedules—compounded by a massive wave of resignations at the agency—will make it ‘awfully difficult, if  not impossible’ to make 2027, another congressional staffer said.”
—The Spotlight, Politico Pro Space, Oct. 3, 2025

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