Well-Heeled Fliers Against Air-Traffic Reform

City Journal discusses air traffic control reform with Marc Scribner.

A CEO on a Gulfstream doesn’t make a great poster child for government welfare, so the NBAA has spotlighted other groups enjoying subsidies under the current system, like small-town airports and private pilots (though they’re not exactly poverty-stricken, either). The trade group whipped up fears that major airlines would take over the system and impose crippling fees and restrictions. These claims were baseless because the airlines would be a distinct minority on the new corporation’s board, but the NBAA spread the fears by bankrolling front groups, including one called the Alliance for Aviation Across America.

“Tax records indicate that NBAA provides nearly all of the funding for these front groups and that they’re operated by NBAA employees or contractors,” says Marc Scribner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “These groups have been trotting out an interesting cast of characters—from former astronauts to ‘Hero of the Hudson’ Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger—to spread lies about air traffic control reform in a desperate attempt to maintain NBAA’s unfair and outsized political influence over U.S. aviation.”

Read the full article at City Journal.