FAA Flight Delays An Old Bureaucratic Game

Investor's Business Daily ^ | 24 April 2013 | Editorial

[IBD editorial writer]

Government: The FAA has done an incompetent job of making tiny sequester budget cuts, leading to flight delays across the country. It's time for Congress to haul these people in and make them explain their real priorities. By the Federal Aviation Administration's logic, all it takes is a 5% cut in the FAA's $12.5 billion budget, as the 2011 Budget Control Act requires, to throw the whole air transportation system out of whack. The result? Three-hour delays for 1,200 flights at America's busiest hub airports — including all three in the New York area, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta — by the FAA's estimate. The real reason cuts are hitting the agency's 15,000 air traffic controllers at the most productive part of the bureaucracy is to make the public scream. What's more, the idea is to use that screaming to persuade the public that cutting the government is impossible and to sign off on higher spending. It's the oldest trick in the bureaucratic book.

[IBD editorial writer]

Making air flight a political football.

[InterceptPoint]

Here is a sample. LAX to ORD. Taking off on time and arriving early. Two very busy airports. All smoke?

[onyx]

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[tom paine 2]

FAA has a total of 47,000 employees. 15,000 are air traffic controllers. If this was a private company they would be broke. Need to get rid of the useless desk jobs in Washington.

[Bernard Marx]

It's the oldest trick in the bureaucratic book.

And it works over and over and over again because voters are either too stupid or too lazy to hold the politicians' feet to the fire. Worse, most of the MSM magnify the result of the con game, not the cause, seeking to herd the public toward the Big Government corral.

[faithhopecharity]

after 4.3 years of screwing the American public and making fools of the voters,
now this.

verily, verily... there is nothing new under the sun....

(3.7 years more krap coming, prepare thyself...)

[pepperdog]

It is so obvious it’s insulting. Federal employees earn at least four hours of annual leave per pay period, a pay period is usually two weeks. So they get at least 104 hours of annual leave per year. So how, pray tell, do we manage while these same people are taking their vacations? And how about when they take sick leave? And has anyone thought about the huge delays that happened when Reagan fired the ATCers? No, I don’t believe it’s even been mentioned, and I don’t remember any huge delays, how was that possible? It’s an Obama shell game!

[I want the USA back]

It’s done on purpose. They want to inflict the maximum pain in the shortest time.

[Road Warrior ‘04]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2013/apr/24/washington-airports-spared-sequester-impacts/