Originally Posted by tallpilot

Privatization is a mixed bag and might not be a panacea but as has been mentioned above the current system isn't exactly wonderful. Perhaps the people at SpaceX currently catching rockets out of the sky could possibly come up with something better? Is that difficult to believe?

The amount of fuel wasted by poor ATC is massive (why don't environmentalists care about this). They've been talking about NextGen since before I started flying but just last week I had to hold for 10 minutes because the airplane that landed in front of us didn't cancel IFR.

ADS-B and ACARS told the airline operations when it was on the ground and at the gate with 1 minute of accuracy/transmission delay (we could easily get this down to tens of seconds if anyone cared) but we have to wait for a center supervisor to make a PHONE CALL to figure out the airplane is on the ground.

I'm a fan of being somewhat cautious with change but there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that our current system is not very good and it would be nice if some serious people who prefer getting things done to endless meetings and PowerPoint slides could take a look at it.