With a showdown looming over the future of the U.S. air traffic control system, grassroots advocacy is taking center stage during the NBAA convention this week. NBAA has planned a multi-pronged effort to encourage attendees to reach out to their lawmakers in opposition to a proposal to create a user-funded independent ATC organization.

The association is placinging iPads through the exhibit halls that will facilitate electronic contact will lawmakers and is highlighting the “ATC Not For Sale” theme with a website, Facebook page, signage and volunteers wearing themed shirts. In addition, the opening general session this morning will kick off with a video on the issue.

NBAA has joined efforts with multiple general aviation organizations, small airports, mayors, business leaders and certain conservative and consumer groups in opposing the ATC proposal, expressing an urgency as ATC reorganization advocates wage a full-on press to forward the proposal.

A number of tactics are being used, beyond the editorials, positive and negative ad campaigns, numerous studies and individual office visits. Chief backers House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pennsylvania) and House General Aviation Caucus co-chairman Sam Graves (R-Missouri) have reached out to individual lawmakers on both the House and Senate side and numerous leaders in the business aviation community.

And it is coming right down to old-fashioned horse-trading. FAA administrator Michael Huerta recently noted that Rep. Shuster offered to include a highly sought-after trucking provision into the ATC bill to win over more House Republicans and Democrats.

These efforts have had some effect. In September, White House officials expressed optimism that the measure would pass the House. “The vote count in the House is looking very, very good,” D.J. Gribbin, special assistant to the President for infrastructure policy at the White House, told an Airlines for America (A4A) Commercial Aviation Summit on September 13.

House Transportation and Infrastructure (T&I) Committee Republican leaders had hoped to bring the measure to the House floor last month as part of their comprehensive six-year FAA reauthorization bill. However, the schedule got backed up in the wake of the recent hurricanes, according to T&I Committee staff.

Gribbin, the keynote speaker at the A4A conference, added that while this idea has been around for a long time, at “no other time in history have so many things lined up in favor of this proposal,” with the backing of the administration, the Department of Defense, the chairman of the T&I Committee, the airlines and the controllers' union.

Despite this optimism and bargaining chips, House Democrats have remained strongly opposed to the legislation. Rep. Pete DeFazio (D-Oregon), the ranking minority member on the T&I Committee, vowed to keep up the fight against the proposal. “I will continue to follow Shuster around and talk to people at the ledge,” he said. Even if the proposal is successful in the House, it also faces strong opposition in the Senate, DeFazio pointed out.

As outlined in the House, the proposal would carve ATC operations out of the FAA and set up a new independent organization. The ATC proposal is largely based on the plan that faltered in the House last year, but with changes to the makeup of a board that would steer the organization and language providing some general protections for rural community access. Ostensibly, the proposal would exempt business and general aviation, including Part 135 operators, from the new user-fee structure.

Proponents argue that sweeping change is necessary to better prepare the ATC system for an anticipated long-term growth in air traffic, with delays already plaguing the system. They maintain the management of the large-scale modernization programs needs an overhaul and argue that the fits-and-starts of an unpredictable congressional budgeting system is disruptive to those modernization efforts.

Opponents, however, point out that the choke points in the system are a function of an airline-created hub-and-spoke system, or weather, and that modernization is occurring. They note that with one of the biggest modernization efforts—ADS-B—the FAA already has installed the infrastructure. It is now up to the operators to equip their aircraft, but the airlines are the ones seeking an extension.

An 'Airline Power Grab'?

While the ATC board would be balanced among users under the new proposal, business and general aviation advocates are wary, noting the board’s fiduciary duty will be to the ATC system. This means decisions must be driven toward that goal. During a congressional hearing, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who was testifying in favor of the concept, conceded that that, “in broad terms,” an ATC board would have an incentive to prioritize operations of larger airports. NBAA president and CEO Ed Bolen has called the ATC proposal an “airline power grab.”

And while general aviation is exempt from fees for now, there is still little clarity on the future, opponents worry. They point to renewed arguments of some reorganization advocates that business aviation is not paying its fair share—an argument that should be moot under the current proposal given that the legislation's drafters purposely exempted this segment.

As for the dynamic on Capitol Hill, many House lawmakers solely represent urban areas that would lean to supporting a system that favored airline operations. In the Senate, many lawmakers are beholden to their rural constituents, which implies opposition to changing a system that has inherent protections for rural operations. The effects on rural operations have been the chief objection stated in the Senate.

The House ATC proposal was included in a six-year FAA reauthorization package that includes numerous measures, such as regulation and certification reform, strongly backed by many sectors of aviation. However, the dispute over the ATC proposal has held up the bill in the House. The Senate version of FAA reauthorization contains no such ATC privatization provision, but that bill has been hung up over airline training requirements.

With both reauthorization bills facing obstacles, lawmakers were forced to continue the cycle of short-term extensions of the FAA’s authorization late last month. Shortly before the FAA’s authorization was set to expire on September 30, lawmakers approved a six-month extension, through March 31, 2018. That's designed to provide continuity for FAA airport grants and NextGen programs, while theoretically allowing enough time for a compromise to be hashed out on a longer-term bill.

The extension, Shuster said, provides “six months’ worth of certainty and stability to the FAA, the aviation community, and the flying public.” He also noted “progress is being made every day on [the long-term FAA reauthorization] bill to provide long-overdue reform of the FAA. With the progress we’ve made, I believe we will move this bipartisan bill through the House in the next few weeks.”

DeFazio, meanwhile, said he was glad that the FAA has the necessary continuity, but, “We should not be in this situation...[Extensions] are necessary only because Republicans have wasted years on their crusade to privatize our nation's air traffic control system and hand over billions of dollars in public assets to a private corporation run by the major airlines.”

NBAA joined five other business and general aviation associations urging lawmakers to strip the ATC measure from the comprehensive FAA bill. The ATC reorganization proposal still lacks consensus, the organizations said in the letter to both House and Senate transportation leaders. They added, “We believe that progress on modernization should continue by implementing targeted solutions to identified challenges and strongly support striking [the ATC proposal], to allow completion of comprehensive, bipartisan, long-term FAA reauthorization.”

Those leaders of those organizations—which alsoinclude the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Experimental Aircraft Association, General Aviation Manufacturers Association, Helicopter Association International and National Air Transportation Association—will be together this week at NBAA 2017 presenting a united front in the opposition to the ATC-privatization proposal.