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Air Travel and the FAA, is Health Care Next?

Today, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) had a “computer glitch” that caused flight delays and cancellations nationwide.  This is the second time in about 15 months where the FAA has had computer problems causing major headaches for the airlines travelers. From cnn.com,

FAA spokesman Paul Takemoto said the system went out at 5:06 a.m. ET and came back on about five hours later. He said officials working to pinpoint the cause know that there was a problem with the main telecommunications systems.

“It was an efficiency problem rather than a safety problem, but it was a serious efficiency problem,” Takemoto said.

Due to the outage, air traffic controllers had to enter flight plans manually, a problem that causes delays, according to the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association.

The air traffic controllers’ group said the problem will cause flight delays throughout the day because of a “domino effect.”

“Air traffic controllers are without electronic decision-making tools and cannot keep up with the sheer numbers of flights — resulting in delays,” the controllers’ group said in a statement during the outage.

“Air traffic controllers on the ground at major airports are getting no automated flight plan information and have to enter that information manually, a cumbersome and time-consuming process

Those of you who know me personally know that I work for a major U.S. airline.  This means I see the inefficiencies of the FAA and the government run air traffic control (ATC) system on a daily basis.  Of course, because passengers never see the government employees in the ATC tower, they blame the airlines and the airline employees for problems like today.

The FAA and ATC computer systems are extremely outdated because it literally takes an act of Congress to upgrade them.  The GPS system in our cell phones and cars is a more sophisticated tracking system than what the ATC uses but again, it takes an act of Congress to upgrade.  Have you ever been in a plane that sat on the tarmac for hours waiting to take off?  Do you want to know why you had to sit their and miss your business meeting?  Here’s a hint… it’s not the airline’s fault.  They don’t want to pay unnecessary wages to their employees and burn fuel without the plane even moving.  On top of that, that aircraft’s next flight will have to be delayed because it will be arriving at it’s next airport later.  The real culprit here is the government run ATC.  They can’t handle the amount of air traffic so they keep planes from taking off until they can “catch up”.  This is practically a daily problem in high traffic areas like the north east.

Most of the delays and aggravations of flying can be attributed to government agencies and employees. Unlike the airlines, the FAA and ATC have no incentive to become more efficient or make the flying experience more pleasurable.  They don’t need to keep passengers happy, make a profit, or worry about the competition.  They can make whatever rediculous rule or regulation they want without being yelled at by passengers or losing business.  For example, no one is allowed to preform any maintenance task on a aircraft without being a certified FAA mechanic.  On the surface this regulation seems to make sense.  Obviously, anyone working on an aircraft should be qualified to do so.  However, because there is no exception to this rule, it can cause problems when an aircraft has an non-flight related issue.  I was working a flight early one Sunday morning when a passenger broke a small light bulb in the overhead bin.  The broken bulb left some small pieces of glass in the bin and they needed to be cleaned up so no one would cut themselves.  But none of us were allowed to remove the broken glass because it was a “maintenance” issue.  At a large airport this would not have been a problem because there are FAA certified mechanics on duty almost every hour of the day.  But I work at a small regional airport and it was 6:00 am on a Sunday morning.  We had to wake one of our mechanics up and wait for him to drive to the airport.  When he finally got there, he took a rag and cleaned up the broken glass.  Then he signed the aircraft maintenance log book and we were good to go.  Any of us could have easily cleaned up the few pieces of glass, but it would have been illegal for us to do so.  Since we had to wait for a mechanic, our flight was delayed for an hour and a half.  Of course all the passengers thought it was the airlines fault.

What scares me is that these same types of inefficiencies and problems with the FAA and ATC will probably carry over to our health care system if President Obama and the liberals in Congress get their way.  The government bureaucracy can’t efficiently handle a few thousand aircraft in the sky so why do so many people think they will be able to efficiently handle the doctor’s appointments of over 300 million people?  Go stand in line at an airport security checkpoint, then sit on the tarmac for a couple of hours waiting to take off.  After that, ask yourself if you trust these same people to efficiently administer your health care.

If you still aren’t convinced that the government is not able to run things efficiently, just go to the DMV and take a number.  It will be good practice for what health care will be like when the government runs it.

Related posts:

1. Obama’s Health Care Plan Provides No Money for Abortions
2. Canadian Health System in Vancouver is Cutting Back on Number of Surgeries
3. A New Insult from the Left, “If You Don’t Support the Health Care Bill, You are Racist!”
4. What Gives Them the Right to Make Me Pay for Their Health Care?

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