Federal Aviation Administration
Plans to Contract Out
U.S. Air Traffic Control Services
To The Lowest Bidder

The Air Traffic Control system in the United States is the largest and safest in the world.

Our system is the envy of all nations. It has been carefully designed to ensure that tragedies like the one in Switzerland this year -- a collision between two airlines -- will not happen here.

Ensuring the safety and security of its citizens is the clearest mandate the federal government has.

It is clearly an inherently governmental function. But the FAA has already compromised safety by contracting out air traffic control towers at smaller airports and the installation and maintenance of flight-critical navigation equipment.

The FAA plans to continue to sell additional Air Traffic Control services by privatizing the functions of Flight Service Controllers.

One only needs to look to Europe's and Canada's results to see how this will turn out. Nationalization and privatization of these services have been an expensive and inefficient failure by any standard. Europe's system is now so complicated and expensive, only the wealthiest can fly their own planes and airline passengers pay excessive premiums for the European Community's commercialized Air Traffic Control.

American Flight Service Controllers provide critical weather and aeronautical information to our nation's pilots.

They also played a major role in managing the National Airspace System on 9/11. As the Air Traffic Control services slowly returned, amidst the confusion and complexity of new, more detailed security requirements, FAA Flight Service Controllers responded with professionalism. Aviation safety and security of the national Airspace System were never compromised.

The events of 9/11 demonstrated that safety and security should never be compromised.

However, the FAA has set the wheels in motion to privatize your Air Traffic Control system. Small towers were the first to go, followed by aviation systems. Now, Flight Service Controller duties will be sold to the lowest bidder with no system announced as of yet to monitor safety and security. Left unchecked, the FAA will sell safety and security all the way to the next mid-air collision.

Tell Congress and the White House NOW that aviation
safety and security are not for sale.

The National Association of Air Traffic Specialists