>I thought the evidence was pretty clear: the safety record of American ATC is nearly perfect and delays caused by ATC are nearly nonexistent.

As I noted elsewhere, other countries like Canada have implemented technology like GPS flight tracking and digital messaging between pilots and controllers which makes flights safer. In the US, they try to mitigate the dangers of the aging air traffic control system by spacing the planes out further. You might not notice the inefficiencies being put into the system, but as the American Airline CEO has said:

>“Today to fly from DFW to Philadelphia is about 30 minutes longer than it was in 1979,” Parker said, “simply because we have an [air traffic control] system that hasn’t kept pace with the rest of the world.”

https://www.dallasnews.com/business/american-airlines/2017/0...

At a minimum these kinds of inefficiencies result in more pollution and higher ticket prices.

By having political control of air traffic control, it also means air traffic control is routinely held hostage to government shutdowns and budget impasses which can also impact safety. For example:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/01/how-shutdo...

This article talks about how LaGuardia was shut down due to the government shutdown:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-the-air-traffic-control-sy...

These sorts of things don't make air travel more safe - they make it less safe.

Having the regulator regulate themselves is an inherent conflict of interest. For example, this paper done by the NTSB a long time ago addresses the issue of the lack of study of ATC failures:

>…However, current accident and incident reporting systems were not designed with ATC errors in mind, making the analysis of latent factors, such as supervisory and organizational issues, extremely difficult. What is needed is a new error-analysis framework that will facilitate the gathering of information during ATC related accident and incident investigations ...

https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/maintenance_hf/library...

later we see:

>…In April 2007, the NTSB made four further recommendations, three measures to avoid fatigue affecting the performance of air traffic controllers

These recommendations were prompted by analyzing _4_ previous accidents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comair_Flight_5191

Yet this quora discussion implies that fatigue and the unwillingness to report mistakes are still a problem at the agency:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-penalty-to-air-traffic-con...

Does anyone actually think having the regulator regulate themselves is a good long term approach?

In terms of your comments health care reform, you make some good points, but your argument deserves a HN discussion all its own. In this one, I am simply trying to show that the current ATC system in the US is not an example of "a superb" government program and I would say it should be reformed to be more like every other major country.

The US government is alone among major countries of being the regulator and provider of air traffic control. In comparison to other countries we have higher costs, less efficiency and arguably less safety. The first proposal to break out the regulation of air traffic control with the provision of the air traffic control was done by the Clinton administration. Support since then has been bipartisan and opposition has also been from members of both parties for various reasons. (I read somewhere that one of the biggest long time opponents of breaking out the air traffic control has been the associations of owners of private jets as they currently pay about 1% of the cost of ATC, but are closer to 10% of the flights in major airports. In reality, owners of private jets can likely afford to pay a more proportional percentage of the costs they impose on the system.)

In the end, it i disappointing to see people immediately reject the idea without even examining the evidence. If we can't reform something this blatantly obvious, I wonder how we will ever come to a resolution on big complex issues facing the country. Those who want to keep the status quo on air traffic control should provide some evidence why having a self regulator who relies on decades old technology and is more costly than other countries is the best we can do for air traffic control.