The biggest threat to aviation safety in the U.S. is air traffic control. They’re short-staffed, overworked, and working with outdated technology and bad culture has developed.
We’re throwing money at the problem, despite spending billions of dollars over decades and failing to successfully upgrade technology. There’s not much indication that underlying problems at the FAA are being addressed. So it’s an open question at best what improvements we’ll get for the money.
- The One Big Beautiful Bill Act added $12.5 billion in taxpayer money to air traffic control.
- The Trump administration wants another $20 billion in taxpayer money.
The FAA Air Navigation Service Provider (air traffic control) spends about $14 billion a year which is less than passenger aviation excise taxes raise. Instead of pouring an additional $32 billion in subsidies at the system, there are better models. One of those is how Canada does air traffic control. In a new paper by a former air traffic controller and manager makes the case for restructuring the system along these lines.
The Reason Foundation paper argues that the United States should move air traffic control from the FAA and transfer them to a self-financing nonprofit corporation modeled on NAV CANADA. The FAA would remain the safety regulator, while the new air navigation service provider would charge user fees, borrow against future revenue to fund technology, and make investments without relying on the vagaries of annual congressional appropriations.
Unquestionably Canadian air traffic control is done at lower cost, modernizes faster, and has at least as strong a safety record (probably better).
NAV CANADA is a private nonprofit that doesn’t receiving regular government funding. It finances operations through aviation user fees. It’s governed by a 15-member board comprised of representatives from airlines, government, general and business aviation, labor, independent directors and the CEO. I’d prefer a smaller board.
- Regulator and operator are separated. Currently there’s little accountability for failure because the FAA regulates itself. Arms-length structures are a better safety practice.
- Funding comes from users of the system, not general taxpayers which also fosters greater accountability.
- Long-term borrowing for technology replaces piecemeal investment because the independent nonprofit can issue bonds rather than wait for chunks of funding from Congress. NAV CANADA currently has an AA credit rating.
This isn’t ‘privatization’. There are no shareholders, dividends or equity owners. It’s a system that’s been in place up North for 30 years.
Up until 1996, air traffic control in Canada was similar to the U.S. – operated by Transport Canada, funded substantially through a passenger ticket tax and struggling with outdated infrastructure, staffing and budget constraints.
NAV CANADA purchased the system from the government for C$1.5 billion and shifted to user charges after a two-year transition period, taking over about 6,400 government employees. Productivity gains instead allowed traffic to grow without proportional controller growth.
System costs have been 8$ – 34% higher for the FAA than for NAV CANADA between 2009 – 2023, averaging 25% higher. In 2023, FAA costs were 32% higher despite the FAA’s badly depreciated facilities and deferred modernization. The U.S. spends more and gets less. Technology has progressed much faster under NAV CANADA.
- Electronic flight strips were deployed across all 42 Canadian towers by 2009, while FAA completed only its 17th tower installation in April 2026.
- Canada introduced space-based ADS-B over the North Atlantic in 2019. (NAV CANADA handles all traffic over the North Atlantic. It’s not just domestic Canada.)
- NAV CANADA has deployed an AI-assisted “Digital Twin” traffic-flow optimizer across all seven area control centers.
- It is beginning a nationwide deployment of newer controller automation, while core FAA platforms remain based on technology developed in the 1990s and early 2000s.
This spinoff also strengthened NAV CANADA’s safety culture and reporting. NAV CANADA’s five-year average rate of physical losses of separation declined by 50%. Like the U.S., they have controller staffing challenges, but they have greater flexibility in addressing those.
While there are concerns that a stakeholder board would give airlines too much control, the 2017 proposal would have given airlines just four of 13 seats, and legal fiduciary duty would stand against this as well.
Members of Congress with towers in their district worry about those jobs, as a result of tower consolidation (which would be better for both staffing and safety) but it’s worth noting that Canadian rural service improved because of technology – satellite approaches, expanded radar and ADS-B coverage. That’s good for those communities. (The 2017 U.S. legislation tried to buy off these objections by protecting towers, rural airports, and exempting general aviation from user fees.) In truth, general aviation does get a good deal and something of a free ride under the current system, though.
I would love for someone to try to defend the FAA simultaneously regulating and operating the air traffic control system and using annual appropriations to managing a capital intensive, technology-dependent service. That would be a real challenge.
Several countries have publicly-owned corporations running air traffic control, which are separate legal entities where the regulator isn’t the service provider. That includes Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Ireland, Finland, Sweden, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and numerous others. The UK and Italy have partial private ownership.
The closest analogs to the U.S. model are China, France and Japan, although even France and Japan directly charge airlines for services. That leaves the U.S. socialist model much closer to China than anything in Europe.
A decade ago, Congress seriously considered reforming air traffic control but the idea was killed by the private pilot lobby who worried that it would cost its members more, even though the bill was structured not to in order to buy off their opposition. Today, the head of the FAA rewrites history to say that Trump never actually supported the idea in the first place (he did).
Agree completely – as someone that spent their career in IT the stories I’ve heard of outdated technology (we are talking vacuum tubes at least a few years ago), unbelievably long project deployments and waste are incredible. We have most of the best technology and consulting companies in the US and can’t get this right while everyone else has flown past us. BTW this isn’t political (outside of Congress being scared to act) as the problem has gone on across administrations of both parties.
Gary, we’ve been through this before, very different systems and airspace. Privatization, even non-profit, would not work as well in the USA, especially under this climate of egregious corruption and inside dealing. Maintaining public funding and oversight is important, as well as properly investing in new equipment, technology, and training more people. Anyway, looking forward to when you post this again next month.
@Retired Gambler — No, it is inherently ‘political’ in that it deals with people, resources, and power. It just may not be partisan, because, yes, both Republicans and corporate Democrats gleefully accept bribes, sorry, donations, from corporate lobbyists, like A4A. If privatization ultimately further empowers the commercial aviation oligopoly and/or prioritizes billionaire private jets over new entrants, then, it’s also anti-competitive. Consumers and the flying public should be aware of those potential risks.
Our government can let go of anything! If it’s a proven success I’m all for it!
@1990 – “this climate of egregious corruption and inside dealing” is one reason to get away from the current system, surely you don’t believe that $25 – $30 billion will be well spent by the current administration right?
That current system has been a total failure for decades at “properly investing in new equipment, technology” so sure just keep doing what we’ve been doing when there’s an actual successful model proven to work.
The left opposes privatization (even if nonprofit). I suspect it comes from a fear it would succeed. They’d rather have a broken system than one that works if that success can be linked to privatization.
@Gary Leff — The answer to government ‘waste’ isn’t handing a critical national safety monopoly over to private capture, but actually enforcing transparency, oversight, and accountability. The current system desperately needs reform and capital investment, not demolition. Thank you for at least not pretending this time that the ‘airspace’ (Canada vs. US) is the ‘same’ or even ‘similar,’ like in prior month’s ‘debates.’
At least North America, whether under NAV Canada or the FAA, is still more functional than Europe, where the airspace is so fragmented as to fall apart the moment the French ‘take a nap’. (Go workers, but, also, like, please, wake up! Gotta route these planes, monsieur!) Ironically, this is one area where I prefer the N. American approach (generally) over Europe. Separate but related, no doubt, EU/UK (and Canada) still ‘win’ BIG TIME on consumer protections for passengers.
@This comes to mind — A privatized monopoly answers to a board room, not the public. Even a non-profit model is still a private monopoly governed by its stakeholders (mostly, the major airlines, and billionaires in private jets). They answer to their own operational ‘efficiency’ (their profits and convenience) not the flying public. Gary is trying to sell us out for the false promise of better tech. Just invest in the better tech and keep the oversight. It’s that simple. Don’t ‘sell the farm.’
First of all, I agree that the regulatory roles & operational roles of the FAA should be distinct.
The problem that most people struggle with in regards to ATC is that the people making the decisions really have very little comprehension as to what ATC actually does. The attitude of the current administration is that there is no staffing problem, it’s just that controllers aren’t plugged in to position enough. That’s a bit like complaining about the firefighters being a waste of resources because they are mostly just sitting around the firehouse polishing things.
I’ve got 34 years experience ATC. 24 in the FAA, 10 with a private contractor. I also started late in life at 32 (yeah, I know), i have a degree in physics with some engineering courses & a high school teaching certificate so I have some experience of the non-ATC world.
I believe it is possible to privatize ATC in a way that would be functional in the USA. I have very little confidence that the forces that exist will ensure that it is done right.
I’ve spoken with controllers working with NAV CAN. They do have nicer towers (at least the ones I visited) & they are all struggling with staffing. They are actively trying to poach FAA controllers in the current environment. Canadian airspace & busiest towers do not run anywhere near the operations being performed by the busiest US airports. The seven busiest airports in the world (by operations) are in the USA. The next two are in China. #10 is Istanbul.
Everybody likes to complain about paper strips. This demonstrates a level of ignorance that I personally find laughable. Back to what does an air traffic controller actually do. ATC is there to help ensure the smooth flow of traffic. Which is what the politicians & public believe & is partly true. What a lot of pilots know is that orderly expeditious flow of traffic is a secondary role & in all but the busiest airports could readily be handled by AI (for which I have good reason to believe is the intention of this administration). What AI cannot reliably do is perform the most important function of air traffic control – prevent disasters. ATC is most important when things go wrong – or at times, having the foresight to prevent things from going wrong (think of deflecting the comet beyond the orbit of Uranus rather than trying to do it inside the orbit of the moon).
So paper strips again; paper strips do not crash. The worst that happens is someone spills their drink on it or it falls on the floor. Technology is nice but what really matters is resilience. Controllers with resilient minds that aren’t rattled when strange things happen (AI, not so good at that). Equipment that is simple enough that it doesn’t fail. I like radar & fancy touch screens, they are very pretty. But what is most important is equipment that never breaks. And all equipment breaks.
Another distinct difference between aviation in Canada & the USA. The USA has general aviation airports that are busier than Toronto-Pearson. Within 50 miles of Manhattan, you have three major commercial airports & seven major GA airports with over 2 million operations/yr. The general aviation airports count for half of that. Flying into TEB is like threading a needle between LGA & EWR traffic!
Phoenix (PHX) has more annual operations than Pearson (~487k compared to ~380k in ’25) but on top of that, there is another 2 million, mostly GA operations within ~25 miles of PHX. That’s half of Canada’s entire air traffic volume in a 25 mile radius!!
Then there is the problem of user fees. For general aviation? Does that mean that GA pilots can opt out of ATC services? Does that mean that they are that much more likely to fall on someone’s house because they decided they didn’t want to pay? Keep in mind that USA aviation flies over much more densely populated areas than most of Canada’s air traffic.
I think it is possible to do an air traffic organization for the USA that is outside of the normal government procurement process but I am equally certain that once you get through the politics of it, it will not be done nearly as well as would be possible.
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@1990 – you are so anti capitalism and private industry that you are willing to continue a proven, failed approach to air traffic modernization and management. I understand your soapbox but get over it. You have to break a few egg shells to make an omelette so I’ll take whatever minor problems or corruption that may come up to fix our system. The government has proven incapable of fixing it and we have one of the more costly and inefficient systems in the world. A more modern system is better for all. This is just one of the areas the Federal government has no business managing and that private industry would do better. We have to cut the scope of the government/ nanny state management isn’t a good thing.
@This comes to mind says
Always blame the “left”. What a crybaby.
Agreed. It probably couldn’t hurt to follow the Canadian model. Given that Canada has a GDP approximately the same size as Texas and a population apx 8% of the USA, with land mass about equal, there might be some unanticipated complexities involved implementing it in the USA. It is easy to write a white paper saying everything should be different. In any case, I doubt it will happen anytime soon, even if it were hypothetically the only priority of the current administration.
However, I have been hearing radio silence on what the current administration is actually doing to improve the the air traffic controller system. Since I fly a lot, I would love to hear what changes to safety they are making for better for worse.
In other words, what is the current administration is doing with the “$12.5 billion” additional dollars they already have received and what they are planning with the “$20 billion” they are asking for. Any chance this blog could write about that.
What ATC needs is a long term vision and the ability to stick to it. The idea that political appointees, that change every four years can have that long term vision is a mistake. Privatization will also not work because as soon as you add the profit motive corruption and inside dealing become a factor. We don’t need a CEO of ATC taking home $100 million a year. Neither Mayor Pete nor Sean Duffy were/are qualified to assume that role. The role needs to be filled by someone outside of the current entrenched FAA leadership, and someone that can stay on the job through its entirety whether that takes 6, 8 or ten years to accomplish. We can’t expect the current Administration to appoint a competent person so an independent Commission needs to be set up to appoint an administrator and team that takes charge of the system and follows it to fulfillment.
We used to aspire for the best. And that’s we ended up accomplishing.
Now we aspire to fill the pockets of the donors. And that’s what we accomplish.
1990 gets it.
Gary does not.
The US operates the largest ATC system in the world and does it to levels of performance that no other large ATC system matches.
and the FAA not only does it at lower cost but also supports a larger general aviation ecosystem than any other country in the world.
We need long-term funding for ALL capex the US spends; THAT is why the US can’t move ATC forward any more than they can get cost-efficient contracts for major defense projects.
“without relying on the vagaries of annual congressional appropriations.”
And instead relying solely on the whims of the president like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (RIP)? Being an “independent” nonprofit doesn’t mean anything anymore, and Reason knows that
Gary. Ignore the haters, the Trumpkins, the MAGA red hats and the rest of them. You are absoycorrect on this issue.
Will we ever learn something from the rest of the world, let alone the “51st State”(sorry Canada…no really. Genuinely sorry) Probably not. We live in an echo chamber where we keep piling on and believing the American Exceptionalism argument that nobody could possibly do anything better without cheating.
@ 1990. You bewail the bipartisan corruption of the current system, correctly, and then claim that justifies government operation of that system. You can’t get to where you want to go from where we are.
@WileyDog. You haven’t read enough from me if you think I always blame the left. I love wearing my “Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right” tshirt. I have a lot of problems with the right. I do complain about the left more frequently here, but that’s from the topics that come up, as I’ll gladly rant about whoever gets it wrong (in my mind). As a libertarian, the left think I’m right-wing, and the right think I’m left-wing. Sadly, both sides seem to conceive of only two groups: those with them and those not.
It will never happen…makes too much sense!
@Gary Leff “This isn’t ‘privatization’. There are no shareholders, dividends or equity owners. It’s a system that’s been in place up North for 30 years.”
Of course this is privatization . . . and that’s a good thing that we shouldn’t run away from. This is an independent non-share capital corporation, run for the benefit of its stakeholders. NAV Canada is not a political organization and isn’t run by politicians. Many insurance companies and banks are run as mutual benefit corporations, without shareholders or equity owners, under the same general principles.
The FAA is run essentially as a Soviet enterprise, the same way that the USSR centrally planned how industries would be organized, and put apparatchiks in charge of operations. NAV Canada has no such resemblances, and might be the very best thing Canada does in 2026.
“It’s governed by a 15-member board comprised of representatives from airlines, government, general and business aviation, labor, independent directors and the CEO.”
Incorrect use of “comprised of”. Should be “composed of” or “comprising” without the “of”.
@1990 – You knocked this one out of the ballpark. Nicely done.
@This comes to mind – I have read many a comment from you but have yet to see any going after the right. I can only take my cues from that. You can claim that the rabid right doesn’t like you but you still consistently side with them.
Given the absolute disaster of ATC delays last summer at YVR, NavCan isn’t perfect either. And politicians definitely took notice, and the pressure was definitely on. Things have been fairly smooth this year, but I wonder at what expense.
Generally speaking, though, allowing a nonpartisan nonprofit to run ATC would seem to be a good idea. You know, sort of like public broadcasting, or the National Science Foundation. Except, um, well, about that. We used to have bipartisan agreement on what was nonpartisan, but nothing is nonpartisan anymore and it’s the party in power who has decided that’s the way things are going to be. So when political power changes, you can bet that anything that was done by this administration (whether good or not) will be undone. More slow collapse is probably the future of the FAA, and also the future of America.
@jack the ladd — Pointing out systemic corruption isn’t an argument for leaving it broken; it’s a warning that privatizing a natural monopoly just institutionalizes that exact same corruption under a corporate letterhead. Reform requires fixing the mechanism of public oversight, not surrendering the keys.
@Retired Gambler — ‘You are not (a) serious (person).’ Breaking a few (Gr-)eggs only works if you’re making an (T-)omelette, not handing a public safety utility over to private capture. Pretending the market magically fixes corruption doesn’t make it true; it changes who gets to skim off the top. (Also, if you haven’t seen ‘Succession’ yet, it’s fantastic. All five seasons.)
@Christian — It’s funny, I’ve watched as @This comes to mind will attempt the ‘I don’t like #47, but…’ comments at OMAAT, but, for some reason, he really must think this is View from the (Right) Wing, so he’s a little more shy on here. (Oh, and he claims to ‘not read’ whatever I write… yeah… sure…)
@Christian “I have read many a comment from you but have yet to see any going after the right.” I’ve consistency sad negative things about Trump and his sycophants. But, fair enough, he’s not truly from the right. He’s a populist who plays the right for his benefit. But, as I said, as a libertarian, I am used to the left thinking I’m on the right, and the right thinking I’m on the left. The availability bias is strong. Since a large percentage of the debates here are around economics, it doesn’t surprise me if a reader mistakes my free-enterprise stance as being consistent with the right. I agree with the right once you get past their tendency for cronie capitalism and their love of high tariffs (among a few other sins).
@This comes to m ind (sic) — LOL. Yeah, your comments are akin to ‘I don’t like his mustache, but… this son of the Schicklgruber’s has some ideas…’ (proceeds to talk-up the Autobahn.)
Also, “economics”…I thought this was an aviation blog… /s
The problem with user fees is that it can easily discourage the pipeline of future pilots.
Most significantly the USA abhors not for profit large entities. US health insurance companies began as not for profit, the politicians maneuvered them into for-profit and now look at the mess.
Update equipment is a big yes. Remove political appointees in the FAA is a big yes. The Canada model is in a country with national health so their employee costs are much less than ours; the US abhors a national health care system and is for large profits while declining 30% of pre-authorizations.
Sorry, in the USA government is way much better than other business models for critical issues.