Speak out against ATC Privatization

You conveniently ignored the first person to tell you, but the only thing similar to ATC in the USA that has been privatized is FSS, and that "record of history" certainly doesn't tell us that ATC will be better off run by Lockheed Martin or whatever they call ATC Corp.

While the union leadership is for some reason seeming to push privatization, where, interestingly enough, our Union president is a member of a Think Tank that has pushed ATC Privatization for some time, Im very much against it. I don't know a single controller that isn't a Paul/Trish Kool-Aid Drinker that thinks its a good idea. I like my pay, my benefits, my ability to retire with a pension at 48 years old. I don't want a corporate board dominated by airlines to decide that Im too expensive and take that all away.

I didn't ignore it. I just didn't think it relevant. I've worked with FSS when it was both government operated and privately operated, and I can't see a difference in service. I can't speak to their financials, however.
 
I didn't ignore it. I just didn't think it relevant. I've worked with FSS when it was both government operated and privately operated, and I can't see a difference in service. I can't speak to their financials, however.

I look at all the FSS employees who were promised itnwas just going to be a different name on the check and then were promptly fired.
 
The union isn't so much pushing for it as it keeping it's word on guidelines that were laid out. Long term funding has been passed by the house, not sure if it's passed the Senate. The union supports all legislation that provides long-term funding and the Shuster bill did that. I believe the union leadership may have been too enthusiastic about it at first, but it certainly isn't pushing for it now.

And I voted for Rinaldi/Gilbert, not because they are perfect, but because they are the best choices available by miles and miles.
 
I didn't ignore it. I just didn't think it relevant. I've worked with FSS when it was both government operated and privately operated, and I can't see a difference in service. I can't speak to their financials, however.

You don't think everything that happened with FSS Privatization is relevant to ATC privatization? Its the only similar thing you can really look at as evidence of what might happen to us. To just brush all that off as "not relevant" is pretty dishonest to me.

The fact that its all consolidated to like 2 locations running everything except Alaska sure seems to be a difference in service to me.

Im just happy Shuster is retiring. The guy dating an airline lobbyist trying to privatize the ATC system wasn't sketchy at all. I know the line is that nothing will be supported that doesn't protect our pay and benefits, but I have a hard time believing an 11 member board or whatever it was proposed to be with only one ATC rep would protect us during hard times.
 
A few years ago, I randomly ran across a good explanation about the follies of privatization of the FSS, written by our very own @RDoug
It's long, but good. He wrote three parts, here is the link to part one How Contracting Government Gets People Killed—Part I

Here is an quote from part 3,

"In this segment you saw how taxpayers wound up actually paying more to Lockheed Martin than the FAA spent on the same function . . . and you’re paying that larger amount to handle only about 20% of the calls because Lockheed Martin chased away upwards of 80% of their customer traffic with incredibly bad service. And what ever happened to those 80% of pilots who gave up listening to busy signals, getting put on hold, having their radio calls go unanswered, or their flight plans just disappear into thin air? As you have seen, some of them died as a direct result of this scam. "

What's going to prevent the same thing happening to ATC services? I prefer to keep ATC part of the government, not because I work for the FAA, because it's asinine to think the airline ran board will have safety and first come, first served as a priority.
 
You don't think everything that happened with FSS Privatization is relevant to ATC privatization? Its the only similar thing you can really look at as evidence of what might happen to us. To just brush all that off as "not relevant" is pretty dishonest to me.

The fact that its all consolidated to like 2 locations running everything except Alaska sure seems to be a difference in service to me.

Im just happy Shuster is retiring. The guy dating an airline lobbyist trying to privatize the ATC system wasn't sketchy at all. I know the line is that nothing will be supported that doesn't protect our pay and benefits, but I have a hard time believing an 11 member board or whatever it was proposed to be with only one ATC rep would protect us during hard times.

From a user's perspective, I didn't see a difference between FAA and Lockheed, or Leidos, or whoever they are now. But, I'd argue that FSS itself is obsolete, due to the internet, tablet technology, and companies like ForeFlight.
 
From a user's perspective, I didn't see a difference between FAA and Lockheed, or Leidos, or whoever they are now. But, I'd argue that FSS itself is obsolete, due to the internet, tablet technology, and companies like ForeFlight.

As an user, how often have you used FSS services? Because any user that's regularly dealing with them can tell you they're terrible. Privatizing FSS was a huge mistake, and privatizing ATC would be an even bigger one.
 
As an user, how often have you used FSS services? Because any user that's regularly dealing with them can tell you they're terrible. Privatizing FSS was a huge mistake, and privatizing ATC would be an even bigger one.
And he answered that he thought FSS wasn't any good because of all the options that make actually talking to them a waste of time in most cases. There'd probably be the same complaints if the FAA was still running it in the continental USA.

How often do you use Flight Service for more than taking tower light outage calls?
 
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