Instead of railroads, think ships and ocean as a better comparison.

 

that’s a terrible comparison. the better one if you want to bring it to ship is the idea of competition among harbormasters managing traffic. how, exactly, do you have them compete in a way that doesn’t compromise safety of ships?

 

passengers have the ability to choose different (highly regulated) airlines. the airlines’ product is a seat on a route, which can be operated by numerous competitors.

that doesn’t translate to atc at all, making your statement here nonsensical.

 

Government contracts are no shining example of cut-throat competition and efficiency... but they are a darn sight more efficient than .gov bureaucrats and civil slackers doing the same job. I do however suspect that ATC controllers are about as effecient as they're going to get... they work hard, pay is lower than in the past and they're one of the very few groups of civil servants who actually *need* a pension since their retirement age is so low. But I'm certain there's bureaucratic overhead that can be tuned up.

The competition comes into play when you bid for and awarded the contract... you have to come in with better value (no longer just lowest bidder as in the past) to win, and then when the contract is up for renewal you have to compete again.

It's not a monopoly in the economic sense, you're simply executing a limited-duration contract you already competed for and won.

 

Most other countries outsource ATC. You could easily outsource harbormaster and I'm sure some of them are.

I know as fact that Columbia River pilots are contractors, very well paid and you don't hear about them running tankers aground.

What's funny about this is that some topics which used to be Sonic's fringe rants are now looking more likely than not

 

yes, with very careful regulation that those pushing privatization generally oppose.

we could have companies compete for the contracts, but then you get into a whole other issue of government contract awards that the free market isn’t solving.

 

now turn up the wharton mba squeeze for shareholder value. we’ve seen it in contracted government services before…but instead of bad service we get dead passengers.

 

I agree that this one is marginal. But everyone else seems to be doing it, so there should be data avialable to make the case one way or another.

 

Give me European controllers over what we have any day. Never been yelled at by Heathrow or had their controllers try to claim a PD over their mistakes. US ATC are more concerned being skycops.

https://onemileatatime.com/news/jfk-...-france-pilot/

Our controllers here are beyond unprofessional.

 

data on extremely low-probability events is hard to get in a way that doesn’t kill people, and it’s confounded by the different regulatory schemes, made worse in the dynamic “cut everything without regard to the consequences” situation we are entering.


“other countries do it” is extremely myopic thinking without considering how other countries do it