Hastening their own end

The controversy during the past year or so about the Aviation Trust Fund and the implementation of user fees instead of airline ticket taxes continues to expand. The consequences of this are profound, and in a nutshell, if the proposal by the FAA is adopted, it will lead to the demise of the Air Traffic Control System.

The immediate consequences for general aviation will be diminished safety. Some other consequences, good and bad:

1) The number of GA VFR flights will increase, the number of IFR flights will decrease
2) The economic barriers to entry for ADS-B and other technologies that support in-situ (in cockpit) flight safety will come down.
3) Class E airports will increase in value
4) Congestion at larger airports will become worse to the point where VFR entry will be denied (the airlines will gain a foot hold over their GA competitors to service larger airports exclusively - in some cases this is true already.)

Eventually, GA flight operations will minimize their use of ATC in the NAS. The airlines will be paying less for the system. A gap will develop and there will be funding shortfalls - shortfalls that do not exist today. The airlines will resist any increase to the fees, and lobby for down-sizing the ATC system in favor of technology in the airliner that can provide the same level of safety for the flying public as the ATC system, possibly as proven by GA (true or not, that could be one argument).

On the surface, this would appear to be a pretty good result. Unfortunately, aviation safety is extremely complex. The agenda of the airlines is not safety, it is short-term profitability. They do not foresee the impacts on flight safety that this will have - they just don't see it on the radar as an issue for them. But that is where they are wrong, because the overall incredible level of safety we enjoy today will be lost, perhaps irreparably, and the impact that will have on profitability will be even more significant.