Top Priority is New FAA Chief

With little fanfare and a lot of back patting, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee seemed to be in a love fest with Department of Transportation Secretary Designate Ray LaHood at yesterday’s confirmation hearing. However, Chair Jay Rockefeller began the questioning with the airline position that that industry pays for 92 percent of the air traffic control whereas others in the aviation community only pays for 8 percen, statistics seriously in question. That alone sets the tone for this year’s battle on reauthorization which has been stalled by industry arguments on how to pay for it. Interestingly, in answering a question on the highway trust fund LaHood called it a dinosaur left over from an era when the U.S. was trying to build the interstate highway system. It left one to wonder whether he feels the same about the decades-old Aviation Trust Fund.
Rockefeller reminded LaHood of the many meetings with stakeholders attempting to set a fair way to pay for the system “and we got nowhere,” he said, passing the problem along to LaHood. “I’ll just put that on your plate,” he concluded.
Rather than take up the gauntlet, LaHood seemed to want to pass it along. He said his top priority is to find a new FAA administrator, he told the committee, one that will take on NextGen. After several senators mentioned the FAA/controller labor dispute, LaHood said the new administrator must resolve, once and for all, the labor dispute between the agency and its controllers which has been underway since 2005. “We have to get it off the table so it won’t be something the president is going to have to deal with,” said the former member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.