Airlines: We Want NextGen, But We Don't Want to Pay For It

The United States' airlines are in bad shape. Many of them are rapidly loosing money and some recent incidents have garnered them some bad press. Although I don't agree with some of the ways they throw their weight around or how they treat many of their customers, the airlines are as critical to the United States as roads and waterways. Our economy could not exist as it does without them. As such, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has convened a national panel with the purpose of determining the future of the aviation industry.

I think this is a smart and responsible move. I get the feeling that individual airlines are so busy trying to keep from drowning that they're having a tough time looking at the big picture, let alone trying to help influence that picture in a positive way. Don't worry either, aviation groups such as the AOPA were invited to participate in this forum, so the little guys like many of us have representation too.

Aubrey Cohen wrote about this in his Seattle PI blog and had some interesting, if not startling revelations for us.

One quip that I actually found a little funny was from Ed Wytkind of the Transportation Trades Department of the American Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO). According to Cohen, Wytkind "would like government to tighten requirements for new, low-cost airlines seeking to carve out a place in the marketplace by, at times, offering fares below cost." This is going to be an extremely difficult balance to strike. On one hand, I definitely understand how it doesn't make long-term sense to offer fares below cost only to hike them up later. However, as long as these low-cost airlines aren't doing any worse than the big ones, how would it benefit customers to enact regulations to handicap the ingenuity and service that is gaining these airlines market share right now?

As strange as Wytkind's comment was, I am completely blown away by a remark by US Airways' CEO Doug Parker. Apparently, he doesn't think the airlines should fun the NextGen air traffic control system. He wrote a letter about this to Secretary LaHood including the following comment: "...if the cost of deploying NextGen has to be covered by even higher taxes or fees imposed on the airlines, we prefer to live without it at the current time."

Is he serious?

For years, the airlines have been screaming that we need NextGen now. They were more than supportive of funding NextGen through measures including user fees on General Aviation aircraft. We're still fighting to help regulators understand what a bad idea that is. Suddenly now, we have airline execs saying that they shouldn't have to pay for this system? Not just that, they're willing to go without it in spite of saying for years how much they need it?

Now, I do understand the second part of Parker's argument. He goes on to say in his letter that he thinks passengers will benefit from NextGen. The problem is that the airlines are so hard up for cash right now, they would not be able to sustain the increased taxes (or user fees) it would take to fund NextGen. I think we would all admit that's true...Secretary LaHood wouldn't have convened his panel if that wasn't the case.

Although I concede that the airlines can't afford to pay for NextGen (through increased taxes and fees that will be passed on to customers) right now, I feel like they bear a lot of responsibility for it. As I've said many times before, General Aviation aircraft don't fly into the airports that will benefit most from NextGen. In fact, neither do military aircraft. The airlines will be the only ones to reap a vast majority of the benefits that NextGen will offer. If they want those benefits, they should be willing to fund them.

Apparently though, they don't even want those benefits any more. Where does that leave us then? Can the US government produce enough money from the general tax fund to cover NextGen? After giving out hundreds of billions in stimulus money this year, I doubt it.

Although the airlines will hate it, I think the most fair way to fund NextGen is through fuel taxes. Fuel consumption proportionally represents use of the air traffic system. Large aircraft that burn a lot of fuel are more likely to be the ones in controlled airspace monopolizing NextGen resources. Yes, the airlines will end up paying more of those taxes than the rest of us...as they should.

As far as I can see, the only other option is to abandon NextGen for the time being. Even if the airlines could afford to fund the system they want, I've been saying for years that there are other reasons we aren't ready for NextGen.

Just last week, I wrote about an RTCA report that brought up the concern of convincing people to pay for and use NextGen equipment on their aircraft after the system is in place. That's one problem we should solve before we try to implement this system.

By far though, I think the most important issue of all is the fact that we don't have the ground infrastructure at our major airports to support the current density of air traffic, let alone a 200% increase. It seems like every time I ride an airline, I see reminders of how there aren't even enough gates at airports to handle loading and unloading passengers and how airline scheduling policies create delay-inducing congestion at departure runways.

NextGen is a great idea. It has the potential to improve our air traffic system. However, we aren't ready for it. We haven't figured out how to fund it and we haven't figured out how to deal with the traffic it generates. Now, it's primary user can't even afford to chip in for it. We need to solve these problems before we go ahead implementing the system. I sure hope Secretary LaHood's panel comes up with some good ideas!