Trump Wants To Modernize Air Travel By Turning Over Control To the Big Airlines (theverge.com) 341
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Today, President Donald Trump endorsed a plan to hand over oversight of the nation's airspace to a non-profit corporation that will likely be largely controlled by the major airlines. Republicans argue that privatizing air traffic control will help save money and fast track important technological upgrades. But Democrats and consumer groups criticize that plan as a corporate giveaway that will inevitably harm passengers. The air traffic reform proposal, which fell short in Congress last year, would transfer oversight from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to a government-sanctioned, independent entity that would be made up of appointees from industry stakeholders. The effort picked up steam when the union representing air traffic controllers endorsed the plan, citing years of understaffing by the FAA. Some passengers may balk at the idea of handing over day-to-day management of the nation's highly complex air traffic control system to the same companies that rack up tens of thousands of customer complaints a year, and occasionally physically assault or drag passengers off their planes. But the Trump administration argues this is the only way to modernize a system that still runs on technology that's been around since World War II. The FAA is already years into a technology upgrade known as NextGen, which involves moving from the current system based on radar and voice communications to one based on satellite navigation and digital communications. The FAA wants to use GPS technology to shorten routes, save time and fuel, and reduce traffic delays by increasing capacity.
Republicans (Score:5, Funny)
Two things that come to mind when I think about Republcans:
1. Embrace of technological progress.
2. Telling the truth about what motivates their policies.
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Yes dear AC, like WMD in Iraq, no anthropomorphic climate change, voodoo economics, bombing middle eastern countries will make them peaceful, pollution is good for you, nuclear power is clean as hell and produces no waste products, privatization makes things cheaper, guns make everyone safer.... hell, I could go on all day.
Your post is so amusing. No wonder it is anonymous.
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I believe you have fallen into the Chasm of Sar. But I might be wrong...
As usual, Poe's Law applies
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Maybe, but there are plenty of the voodoo economics types here, and they tend to post AC. I thought it might be sarcastic but it wasn't cleaver enough to make that call.
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The only thing that trickles down is piss.
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Yup. The thing that gets me the most angry is that Republicans claim that economic growth is their god, and yet they love it when the wealthy offshore their profits tax free in other countries (like the Panama papers exposed). Economies work best, just like circulatory systems, when the flow is maintained the system is healthy. Offshoring huge profits and leaving them there cuts off the circulation. It stagnates the very economy they claim they want to see grow. Either they are insane, or more likely the mo
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Looks like $2.1 trillion in assets are off shore. US Treasury estimates it costs $111 billion a year.
Intelligent people know how to use Google to find out real information.
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The money sent overseas by immigrants is "after tax". The earn the money, pay the IRS tax and send it to their relatives.
If they pay tax, they can do anything they want with the money.
The $2.1 trillion off shore assets of individuals and corporations have not paid any tax to the IRS. I have a problem with that... don't you?
Whoooooosh (nt) (Score:2)
nt
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The post: satire. You: Lost on you it is.
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You are probably right, but I had fun posting it anyway. :)
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Huh? Who cares?
If some academic out there actually came up with 31 genders that's really no concern of mine. Now pollution and climate change, that actually affects things. I can ignore people in ivory towers coming up with complicated classification schemes, but being ignoring unable to breathe is kind of hard.
Somebody is actually spending time feeling outraged about this 31 genders nonsense?
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"If some academic out there actually came up with 31 genders..."
I'm not sure it was an academic, more likely it was someone from the lunatic fringe of some protest movement.
Re:Republicans are anti progress (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, goddammit. I finally decided to spend sometime to figure out what's all this nonsense about.
It's an ad: https://heatst.com/culture-war... [heatst.com]
Somebody just made an ad to say "here we're accepting of everybody, regardless of what you call yourself", and then posted a list of 31 terms, some of which seem duplicates to me (eg, Male-To-Female and MTF both appear in the list, as well as several variations on "trans").
Basically, whoever made that list tried listing absolutely every possible term they could think of just to drive home that point. That's all there is to it. It's like doing the same thing for racism and then filling a page with Wikipedia's list of nationalities.
And this is what people decided to get all outraged about? Sheesh. People have too much free time these days.
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There's no valid points that are being made here. I finally figured out that all this hubhub is over some random ad NYC posted, and that was probably made by some random intern that just spent a while looking for every gender related term they could find so that it would look as inclusive as possible, and never thought anybody would even think of making a big deal of it.
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I hear 'ya, brother!
Now, can you tell me more about the 31 genders [pics.me.me]?
You have your nuts, we have ours.
We don't let ours run the country.
Privatization is the same as oligarchization (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about rich people making even more money, not about anything else. I wish people would stop the nonsense about greater efficiency. It always ends up badly for regular people, just ask the people in Flint Michigan about their water.
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As opposed to the super connected politicians making all the money. Got it.
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You mean the politicians we get to vote for?
Last time I checked most major corperations didnt let we the people decide who their CEOs are going to be.
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Exactly. Thanks for summing it up so nicely.
Poor Tax (Score:2, Insightful)
Money coming from tax payers means that everyone, from poor to rich pay for the services. As opposed to people who can afford to use the airlines paying an additional fee to support the services they actually use. Considering the ultra wealthy can afford to pay a lesser rate for their taxes (the 80,000 page US tax code isn't that large to make it fair) it's the rest of the population paying for this today!
This is the problem with a whole lot of projects and schemes where both the far left and far right cl
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I present to you. Windows me, windows longhorn, windows Vista
Large complicated projects tend to go off the rails especially when they get done by committee. Instead of a focused task master.
The FAA is trying to upgrade 1000's of installations all of which must communicate with each other, must not disrupt current communications or data and the new system isn't compatible with the old one.
If someone screws up one line of code people!e die by the hundreds.
Do you trust your coding enough not to have any bugs?
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I would like to see a parallel system set up that can be tested before taking over. It makes the most sense. They need to transfer to GPS but I think that ground based backup is a good idea in case of solar storms, orbiting debris issues, etc. But it should be a government run system without any profit motive, or any motive to cut costs whatsoever.
I also think that there should be a big tax on first class and business class travel to help pay for it.
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Government tends to be horrible at everything
We all like to think that, but then we have tech support at any ISP, warranty service practically everywhere, insurance and their crazy rules and forms everywhere, private prisons lobbying for harsher sentencing, and when that's not enough actually bribing judges to send more juvenile offenders to detention for as long as the law allows, major banks helping drug lords and terrorists launder money, Diesel-gate, Wells Fargo, etc.
Government tends to be horrible at everything (Score:5, Informative)
You made the claim "Government tends to be horrible at everything". Keep in mind that when states a premise as a fact, they are "Begging the question."
Government is not horrible at everything. In fact it is quite good at a lot of things. Our mail is delivered every day, our police and fire departments respond every day, our military defends US interests every day, our taxes are collected every day, our currency is managed every day, and thousands of other less-visible governmental actions are performed well every day.
Government is really bad at some things; but, often those things are the kinds of things that private enterprise is equally bad at, if not worse. Government eventually desegregated the private Universities, despite plenty of action to thwart it. In my opinion, Government didn't do a great job in that department, rather they blundered their way through it. However, they did get the job done. Likewise, the Nixon impeachment proceedings were another slow plodding blunder with an eventual success. The cost overruns of NASA were enormous, but the goal of landing a man on the moon was reached. At the time, no private entity would have been able to achieve these goals.
I applaud your decision to consider things more deeply. I hope your consider how much you have already bought into the "evil Government" story line. This story line has managed to leverage the election of a person unqualified to be a politician (he's qualified to be a CEO of Trump Enterprises, but these are not equivalent positions).
US history has had automotive manufacturers release cars they know would explode in minor collisions because it was cheaper to incur the expenses of about 2,400 wrongful deaths than to pay the $11 per car to put a weld patch over the gas tank. That is what a business will do, maximize profits selfishly. Perhaps there are a few businesses which won't, but that doesn't impede the ones that do.
Only government can protect the rights of the people. Stop bashing it if you want your rights protected. Fix it if you think it is broken, but TRUST me on this, don't take anyone's word as fact that it is broken. Lying about broken government is often a cheap trick to get in office.
To prove my point, our current President lied about the broken "Obama plays too much golf" when in reality he's played more golf in the first five months than Obama has played in eight years.
That's your tax dollars at work people! His Secret Service has to guard the golf course. He has to buy out the whole course to do so. He is still getting paid while playing. I'd be pissed if someone earned my trust by pointing out a problem, and then used my votes to make the problem worse (even if it was something as non life-threatening as golf).
There is an old Dutch saying "Truth in small things is not a small thing." It has may ways of being interpreted, but I'll go with, "If one will lie about a small thing, then lying is not a big deal for that person." Trump lies about how much time a President should spend golfing, if Obama played too much golf, then Trump is playing way too much golf (except that Trump is obviously fine with his frequency of playing golf). That's about as small as it gets. Don't expect any truth from this man.
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Re:Privatization is the same as oligarchization (Score:5, Informative)
You must watch Fox News for your information. The government failure started with Rick Snyder, a corporate Republican. The water problems did not start until he signed a bill giving emergency managers more power, and then turned the city management over to a private emergency manager, who switched the water supply to the river water to save money. The city council tried to reverse the situation.
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.... [foodandwaterwatch.org]
But you probably knew that, and were just pissing.
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If government runs properly (not captured by corporate or military interests) then things work out generally well. When governments become beholden to big banks, and business and war, then things tend to get good for the rich, and not so good for workers. Highly regulated capitalism works generally well for most people, but unregulated capitalism is like a cancer on society.
Democrats and consumer groups (Score:2)
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Not controlled by the airlines (Score:5, Informative)
The plan is to create an NGO to operate it, fully funded by user fees -- not to hand control over to the airlines.
This system is used in about 50 countries, including Canada, the UK, and Australia.
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The plan is to create an NGO to operate it, fully funded by user fees -- not to hand control over to the airlines.
This system is used in about 50 countries, including Canada, the UK, and Australia.
NavCanada has fifteen seats on the Board of Directors:
* four Directors elected by commercial carriers through the National Airlines Council of Canada (NACC);
* one Director elected by business and general aviation through the Canadian Business Aviation Association (CBAA);
* three Directors elected by the Government of Canada;
* two Directors elected by employee unions;
* four independent Directors elected by the Board through the Director member; and
* the Chief Executive Officer.
http://www.navcanada.ca/EN/about
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> As usual, Trump has put forward a glorious plan with few details.
Enough with the gloom! He's gonna build a wall in the sky and then make the pigeons pay for it!
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And because greed and amorality run everything:
1. Corporations pass on costs to customers. This will be a new surcharge on your plane ticket.
2. You can bet the system will not only be upgraded but the latest GPS and Mesh Networking tech will come into play, because GREED: Losing a $25 million aircraft because some idiot Islamic pilot wants to fly until he runs out of fuel that you can't even get an insurance settlement on because there is no proof that it crashed, is bad.
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well it doesn't matter who's running the show, we will get the the bill in the end. Right now it's coming partly from taxes and partly from the airlines. This just shifts the initial cost over to the airlines. We will still get stuck with the bill. The problem now is the massive conflict of interest it creates. I'm sure MrT is just looking at this as another business opportunity though. It just blows my mind the amount of business favors he's going to have stacked up before we manage to get rid of him
The privatization fetish (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, yeah. I really want my safety to be weighed against someone's profit margin in a spreadsheet somewhere.
Government is not a business. It should not be run like a business. People who think it should be should not be allowed anywhere near a decision making office in government.
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You think it is profitable to crash multi-million dollar airliners?
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It depends. Their bean counters will hone finely tuned models that predict just how many people they can be allowed to off before it affects the bottom line. As long as they are below the limit, it won't bother them.
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I beg to differ [strongtowns.org]:
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This illustrates one way that a government could be run more like a business for the benefit of all taxpayers.
What fools people is that SOME parts of government look very much like a business. They run office space. They procure stuff. They hire people.
And yes they have some management principles in common. You can have either good or bad management in either business or in government. The fallacy is that you try to solve bad management in government by turning it into a business. That sounds neat a
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Not the customers?
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In private enterprise, teeth is losing customers, or not having your contract renewed. In private business, that's going to happen for one of two reasons: market forces (ie a competitor with a better/faster/cheaper product) or managerial incompetence. In either case, the problem corrects itself when the business goes under. But because shareholders and beancounters, there can be extra sets of eyes to weed out managerial incompetence and workforce incompetence
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Oh, yeah. I really want my safety to be weighed against someone's profit margin in a spreadsheet somewhere.
While I probably agree with you in this particular case (though I haven't read all the details), and I'm generally suspicious of relying on businesses to audit themselves, this policy isn't always true in general. Government can also have bad motivations and conflicts of interest.
Take the TSA and airport security for example. Before 9/11, airport security was mostly a private affair, and it generally functioned well. 9/11 wasn't even really a failure of airport security, since the hijackers actually o
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GPS-based air traffic control systems (Score:3)
GPS is fine when it works. What will happen to air travel when GPS goes down?
This could happen through a technical fault (likely locally, unlikely globally) or via enemy action (jamming locally, destruction of the infrastructure globally).
Remember that the C/A (coarse/acquisition) code that we civilians use for navigation was never meant for that. Like the Internet, various bits of old and new technology and capability gradually accreted into something upon which our entire economy depends. That something was not designed as a whole, and was certainly not designed for robustness and dependability. Ponder this the next time you step onto a plane.
Re:GPS-based air traffic control systems (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GPS-based air traffic control systems (Score:4)
I knew as soon as I heard Trump talk about commercial aircraft not even having GPS capabilities he was full of shit.
It's heart-warming to read intelligent comments like the one above to appreciate how fully full of shit one man can be.
leper colony (Score:3)
Let the indutries set up councils to self-govern? (Score:3, Informative)
And then you can have a supreme council, a council of the heads of councils if you will.
This was briefly the government of Italy, with ministers of Agriculture and Forestry, Corporations, Finance and so on. This was called the Grand Council of Fascism, which see.
Big mistake (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a bad idea that the airline lobby floats every few years. When the Democrats had control, they almost bought it until cooler heads prevailed. With Republicans in charge, it's time for another try. There really isn't much that the Federal government couldn't improve with privatization, but this is one of those things.
If this passes, the airlines will dominate the privatized company, transferring as much cost as they can to general aviation, while abusing their power for the purpose of limiting competition. They will dumb-down the controllers, resulting in chaos. It's hard to believe anyone could make the air travel industry any less accountable than it already is, but empowering an industry with a notoriously poor reputation of policing itself would be one way to do it.
Have we learned nothing from privatized airport security? Although I despise TSA, I have to admit that privatized airport security prior to 9/11 was absolutely useless. TSA, for all its well-documented flaws, ended the concept of minimum wage and constant turnover among security agents.
The Conspiracy Continues (Score:3, Interesting)
I personally knew some GOP planners; this is how they plan:
1) Purposely fuck up government services as much as they possibly can without getting into trouble themselves: get people to hate stuff they like.
2) FUD against government services and politicians... Uncertantity and Doubt = lower voter turn out. Fear (often connected to Hate) is central to their campaigning.
3) Run on reform for said services counting on the public to not be smart enough to see wolves in sheeps' clothing.
4) After the public is upse
NextGen is not great! (Score:4, Interesting)
The NextGen program has had several high-profile failures. The implementation of new routes in Phoenix resulted in a large number of complaints and lawsuits against the FAA. The more recent changes in the SF Bay Area including routing a much higher number of aircraft over Palo Alto and lower elevations in the Santa Cruz Mountains, both of which have angered a great many residents.
Jet traffic brings noise pollution and air pollution to the corridors they travel, resulting in health impacts (though difficult to measure) and sometimes significant reductions in property value. The previous corridors have been used for decades and the impact is well-understood by residents in those areas; the change was not well-communicated before being implemented and residents were mostly caught unawares.
The benefits of these changes include a higher volume of traffic to airports, increasing airport profits; more efficient routes for airlines, increasing airline profits; and potentially cheaper fares for customers resulting from the first two changes. Speaking personally, I would rather keep my home value and quieter skies.
I admit I'm ignorant on a lot of this buuut.... (Score:2)
Nav Canada (Score:5, Insightful)
Canada did the exact same thing (privatize to an NGO) in 1996.
Nav Canada, the NGO that operates Canada's air traffic control, has won three IATA Eagle Awards [navcanada.ca] for Best Air Traffic Controller since 2001. It also closely coordinates with the existing FAA ATC system as the Canadian and US airspace are extremely interrelated (perhaps the most so in the world).
Canada is one of about 50 countries that have gone this route (Britain, Germany, Australia and New Zealand are among the countries that have done so). Nav Canada even sells their system (Australia runs on it) - we could potentially just buy a solution.
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Yes, several countries have ATC run by an NGO, but the difference is in who controls that NGO. You mention Germany, but the DFS in Germany is 100% owned and controlled by the German state, Lufthansa does not have representation. Are there any examples of ATC NGOs where airlines DO have substantial control?
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Perhaps not a bad idea then, though maybe America would be better off outsourcing the running of their elections and their health care system first.
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At the cost of General Aviation (Score:5, Interesting)
Although many don't see it, America leads in freedom of personal aviation. I can use my aircraft just as I use my car. I have proper FAA licenses and medical certificates. I am instrument rated and can fly with the same rules as the airlines. I can also get in my plane and go camping at a remote strip or visit a restaurant in the next town's airport without requesting permission from anyone just as I would with my car. If I fly into big central airports following the same rules as the airlines then I can and do coordinate with the proper FAA officials. My use of these facilities is fully funded by taxes levied on the aviation gasoline that I burn n the plane. The idea here is that as a free American I can choose my mode of transportation within the nation's transportation system on the same basis as anyone else, private or corporate. For the most part, my aircraft is like my car.
With a switch from costs coming from taxes on aviation gasoline to "user fees" for various specific operations and a switch from a government control system to a private NGO the freedom to use an aircraft much like a car for personal transportation will mostly disappear. This is exactly what has happened in (e.g.) Europe where(for example) fees for each takeoff and landing effectively stop practice at small airports.
Then a governing board that will inevitably be dominated by the airlines will set the rules so that those pesky private aircraft will be effectively gone.
If you like this idea, then please accept the same for our highways. Each time you drive to the store for some milk, every time you take a weekend at the lake, you must first file a "drive plan" with a corporate board run by the trucking industry. Then you will give a credit card number so that your driveway exit, road use, and parking use fees will be automatically paid for the trip.
And if you think that this is tin-foil-hat stuff, please look at the rules for private aircraft in Europe and the rest of the world.
This is the death of one more freedom that we currently have in this great country.
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I'm also a pilot and user fees will make things personally very difficult - possibly forcing me to give up flying after 30 years.
I see the argument - from a pure efficiency point of view, light GA is a waste. An "efficient" world will have airlines and corporate jets, with flight training done in empty parts of the country.
The highway example isn't really right - the majority of highway traffic (in numbers and economic value) is personal automobiles. They remain an efficient mode of transportation for many
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One of the things the FAA is doing is coordinating the development of unleaded 100-octane avgas. There's been a number of promising developments and some are already on the market. Once the FAA finishes its tests and (as expected) is able to give blanket approval to use the new fuels in every plane where 100LL is currently certified, everyone'll switch over pretty quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Aren't we doing this with cars (Score:2)
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Let's not forget (Score:2)
...the FAA's update has been called "the worst boondoggle ever", the (Iirc) 3rd failed update effort, eating tens of billions of dollars.
https://www.google.com/amp/amp... [google.com]
I know the narrative is that "every trump idea is stupid" but this plan has worked several times in other countries quite well, including Canada...
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The problem is really the plan. Trump undoubtedly doesn't have one yet. If he ever gets around to it, it will be a horrible give away that threatens key pillars of ATC.
It's kind of like the Iraq war. Was getting rid of Saddam a bad idea? Not too bad. Does that mean we should let Dick Cheney do it? Hell no. The dudes a moron and also doesn't give a shit.
Regulatory capture (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a misleading title (Score:2)
Air Traffic Control is mostly about co-ordinating which planes are going where so as to ensure they don't crash into each other during flight. The private airline companies may not have much incentive to offer great customer service, but they have a BIG incentive to make sure that their planes don't crash. Because A)
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Lowest Bidder (Score:2)
Just like the self-regulating movie industry (Score:2)
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Or, like many government-backed and -funded projects, it'll never complete in its current form, under current management.
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Yes... go on. Tell me what percentage of government projects are that far over budget, or never completed.
Then compare and contrast with the number of big budget *corporate* projects that go way over budget, or are never completed.
Datum: I worked for Ameritech, one of the Baby Bells, in the mid-nineties, in a start-up division. We were going to be Ameritech's entry in the long distance service sweepstakes. And after two years, and three quarters of a BILLION DOLLARS, they gave up and shut it down.
Let's see
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Re:Fox in the Hen House (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sorry, I thought we were talking about air traffic control. I guess that's the problem with metaphors.
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I let the metaphor get away from me intentionally because I see it as part of an overall attitude. The administration would prefer to enrich a handful of self interested corporations at the expense of government workers and consumers. This attitude is typical, the same approach they take to regulations, health care, social safety net, etc.
The thing is, a federal entity being years into an upgrade that goes way over budget and over time and ultimately fails is also a way to enrich a handful of self interested corporations at the expense of government workers and consumers. And taxpayers. The methods aren't even that different.
Never forget! (Score:2)
We can't let terrorists win!
It's corporations who must be the leaders in civilian deaths caused by crashed planes!
Not a bunch of religious fanatics armed with box cutters.
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Yes, because large corporations just LOVE losing $2.5 million dollars every time a plane crashes.
Re:Next Step (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because large corporations just LOVE losing $2.5 million dollars every time a plane crashes.
That's exactly right, corporations do not like losing money. So, it will be a cold calculation of how many dollars it saves not to have a crash and how many dollars it saves not to properly operate ATC. Maybe market forces mean we end up having better service with less loss of life, maybe it means something else. If the optimal profit result ends up being letting a few hundred more people die each year, guess thats what'll happen. Can't wait to find out...
Re:Next Step (Score:5, Insightful)
That's exactly right, corporations do not like losing money. So, it will be a cold calculation of how many dollars it saves not to have a crash
Corporations don't "like" anything ... they're not people. (This isn't Mitt Romney posting, is it?)
The ones making the decisions of how much to spend on security have their own self-interest at heart. So ...
1. CEO cuts spending on safety
2. Short term profit rises
3. Stock skyrockets
4. CEO is hailed as turn around specialist
5. CEO retires, pocketing millions
6. Because of deferred maintenance (see #1), planes have more accidents
7. CEO, basking in retirement, sees start of televised report about plane crashes. Lifts remote. Changes channel.
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Just look at the BA fiasco. Hotshot CEO cut IT spending. No backup system. Lousy IT design and operation. System crashed. (At least a plane didn't crash)
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Corporations have insurance for this... it doesn't cost them.
Insurance is just the cost of doing business.
Re:Next Step (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but they love short-term profits.
You can easily see how this works when you look at businesses that were sustained by government or government-owned companies for the longest time and then privatized. Governments are concerned with running services because that's the business they're in. Private corporations are concerned with making money, running the service is only the necessary evil, the means to the end.
So what they do is cut maintenance and reinvestment to the bare minimum to allow the service to continue. That means that the first couple years you don't notice much, but you eventually notice that the sustainability of the service has been axed when it shows that new people don't receive the training that their old counterpart got (because, why bother, the older ones who received the training can pick up their slack... at least until they retire), it shows that repairs and replacements didn't get the attention they needed and so on.
Re:Modernize! (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean like go back to the TWENTIETH CENTURY MODEL where airports or airlines ran the security lines?
We are *NOT* talking about the TSA, we are talking about the FAA. Different.
In *principle* this could work, but more likly, Trump will hand it off to some corporation that sends a lobbiest with a large bag of cash to suck his cock.
Re: Modernize! (Score:4, Insightful)
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ATC and the TSA are under completely separate agencies. What makes you think that a change in the way the FAA does business will change anything about Homeland Security?
Re:Modernize! (Score:5, Interesting)
Pre-911, the airlines ran security for half the price, with much shorter delays, and with more courtesy and politeness. Penetration testing has shown that TSA is no better than their predecessors at catching perps.
Re:Modernize! (Score:5, Interesting)
Umm, door locks were the fix that prevented any other 9/11s from occurring. The security theater hasn't done a thing.
Re:Modernize! (Score:5, Interesting)
That and the hijackers exploited a "rule" about hijacking that was true until 9-11. Up until then, if your flight was hijacked, you sat still and did nothing. The plane was re-routed to somewhere like Cuba, the hijacker put on a big show to get attention to whatever it was he wanted attention on, and then everyone was released. So long as you kept quiet, you were inconvenienced but otherwise unharmed.
The people on the first two planes that were hijacked on 9-11 kept quiet assuming that this was the rule. The third plane got wind of what was going on and fought back. Sure, they didn't survive, but they went down fighting and ensuring that the hijackers didn't reach target #3.
Any future hijacker won't be able to rely on people abiding by pre-911 hijacking rules. Even if the hijacker is the "fly to Cuba" type, people will assume this is another 9-11 and will fight back. We've seen it in the "shoe bomber" and other hijack attempts. Passengers and crew fight back and subdue the hijacker. This exploit that the 9-11 hijackers used is closed for good.
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Not a chance. ATC is under the FAA, TSA is under Department of Homeland Security.
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Air traffic control radar can't see airliners by itself at any reasonable distance. Planes are equipped with transponders that send out radio signals when the plane is "painted" by the ATC radar. If civilian radars can't see transponderless airliners, they will have no hope of seeing small drones.
Military radar is another matter.
tcas off = crash (Score:2)
http://crankyflier.com/2006/10... [crankyflier.com]
Re: (Score:2)
On the other hand, we all know how BA's recent handling of IT worked out. Perhaps an inappropriate comparison, of course...