DOT Aviation Advisors Missing the Point

In a recent Fast Lane post, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood wrote about the first meeting of the new aviation advisory committee that reports directly to him. Its members hail from airports, air carriers, management, labor, manufacturers, general aviation, and consumer groups.

Their mission? “To examine the industry, its competitiveness, and its ability to address evolving transportation needs, challenges, and opportunities of the global economy,” he writes. “This is not going to be just another advisory committee, and I am not commissioning some report to fill space on my bookshelf. This committee will make a difference.”

Uh huh. Sure. If you say so. I was born a skeptic and started polishing this trait to a professional sheen at the J-school in Missouri—the Show Me state. Around the time I graduated, 1982, is when America started its transformation into what it has become today, a transformation that has made me (and many others) cynical citizens.

This effort to “fix aviation” is exactly like the ongoing effort to reform, to fix, healthcare in this nation. Neither one has anything to do with the people they supposedly serve—passengers, pilots, or patients. It’s all about making money for the companies that provide services. 

LaHood’s post nods at this fact: “This country has an aviation system that is losing billions of dollars, shedding jobs, and using an aging infrastructure. It’s time to get to work fixing it.”

The root problem, in aviation as it is in America, is what companies do with that money. Back in the day, when customers and the workforce mattered, company leaders had the foresight to reinvest a good part of their profits to improve their goods, services, and industry infrastructure.

When corporate czars assumed control of America back in the 1980s, “the shareholder” is what mattered most. (And is it a coincidence that big blocks of company stock were part of the pay packages for most on the senior management team?) Reinvesting in the company’s and industry’s future took a back seat to the size of the next quarter’s dividend check.

There was even more money to be made for the shareholders by buying other companies, selling off the redundant pieces—and firing the people who did those jobs—and cutting every other expense to bone. And people, not just Secretary LaHood, wonder why aviation—and the nation as a whole—is in such a state?

This myopic me-first mindset has been the American way for roughly three decades, and I wonder how this advisory committee is going to change it. If healthcare reform is any indication, they will ignore the underlying problem and come up with a NexGen “fix” that digs ever deeper into our empty pockets. — Scott Spangler