Page 20 - Volume 11 Number 3

Recent News
by Kim Blonigen
The Latest on NextGen and ATC
W hile gathering with airline executives on February 9, based on a White House transcript of the meeting, President Trump expressed that he had no confidence in the FAA’s NextGen system saying, “I hear we’re spending billions and billions of dollars. It’s a system that’s totally out of whack. It’s way over budget, it’s way beyond schedule, and when it’s completed, it’s not going to be a good system.” The FAA immediately responded with a press release that stated that it had “spent $7.5 billion in congressionally appropriated funds on the air traffic modernization program known as NextGen
over the past seven years. That investment has resulted in $2.7 billion in benefits to passengers and the airlines to date, and is expected to yield more than $160 billion in benefits through 2030.”
Also during the meeting, the airline executives let their preferences be known regarding the management of Air Traffic Control (ATC), stating that they wanted the government out of managing the ATC system so that it could be “adequately managed, adequately financed” – being funded by user fees, a concept long pushed by the airlines.
National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) President and CEO Ed Bolen immediately issued a statement, regarding comments made in conjunction with the meeting between President Trump and the airline executives saying, “We’re delighted that, in today’s meeting, the president made clear that aviation modernization is important – that’s a goal with which we agree, and the business aviation community will continue to be at the forefront of aviation- modernization efforts. We very much welcome the opportunity to work with the new president and the Congress to advance this goal in a way that serves all Americans, not just those in the country’s largest cities with commercial airline hubs.
“That said, we are concerned that in today’s meeting, it appears that some airline interests wanted to shift the conversation away from taking a bipartisan approach to modernization, to focus instead on their decades-long objective of privatizing ATC, funding it with
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