OPINION:
The leadership vacuum at the Federal Aviation Administration is making the skies far more dangerous.
In a scathing report issued last month, the Transportation Department’s inspector general revealed that 3 in 4 of the nation’s most critical air traffic control facilities were dangerously understaffed.
For example, the heavy air traffic over New York is being directed with only half the appropriate number of controllers.
Staffing woes have contributed to a troubling increase in near-misses involving airliners. At Reagan National Airport in March, for instance, a United Airlines flight received a takeoff clearance as an American Eagle jet crossed in front of it on the same runway.
An overworked controller was fortunate enough to recognize the catastrophe in the making and ordered the United pilots to abort the takeoff. While no harm was done, good fortune can’t last forever.
Resolving these systemic safety issues ought to be FAA’s top priority, but instead, the agency is obsessed with taking stands against carbon dioxide and racist runways.
It continues to operate without a confirmed administrator because the Biden administration insists on having an activist at the helm.
Phillip Washington, a recent nominee for the top FAA job, was forced to withdraw from consideration after a humiliating Senate confirmation hearing revealed his inability to answer basic aviation questions.
“The FAA can’t afford to be led by someone who needs on-the-job training,” Sen. Ted Budd, North Carolina Republican, said at the time.
Last month, President Biden skipped the nomination process and installed Polly Trottenberg as the FAA’s interim head. Before returning to Washington two years ago to serve in the No. 2 position at the Department of Transportation, Ms. Trottenberg’s primary mission in life was to make life miserable for Manhattan motorists.
As New York City’s deputy transportation chief, she raised revenue through the Vision Zero scheme of lowering speed limits and profiting with speed cameras. She also spent a dozen years working for a number of Democratic senators, including Chuck Schumer of New York.
The resume of this lifelong political activist looks a bit thin compared with that of Stephen Dickson, former President Donald Trump’s FAA administrator. Mr. Dickson graduated from the Air Force Academy, flew F-15 fighter jets, and enjoyed a 27-year career as a pilot for Delta Air Lines.
No senator was able to stump Mr. Dickson with questions about what needs to be done to make the skies safer. Surely an administrator of his caliber would have intervened to stop many of the reckless decisions made in recent days, including pulling the plug on the nation’s most technologically sophisticated air traffic control facility.
Just across the Potomac, Leesburg Airport in Virginia handles more than 75,000 takeoffs and landings each year in complex airspace adjacent to Dulles International. Instead of operating in a conventional tower, Leesburg’s air traffic controllers used a remote office equipped with a sophisticated array of screens that offered life-size views of operations and the ability to zoom in on areas of concern.
The remote tower was set up by Saab as an advanced technology demonstration project that FAA bureaucrats ultimately rejected over the loud objection of local pilots. Now, instead of operating in a comfortable office equipped with radar, Leesburg controllers have been shoved into a makeshift trailer that has no access to radar.
If the FAA actually cared about safety, it would have kept the remote tower open until the town constructs a conventional replacement with radar. The FAA refused to do so.
Congress ought to intervene before someone gets hurt.
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