Elections: More Pluses Than Minuses for GA

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Now that the debris from the Tuesday election has rained back down from the heavens, how is general aviation likely to fair in a decidedly red Congress? Such that the 113th Congress didn’t accomplish much of anything, are the prospects for GA any better in the 114th, which convenes in January?

Based on conversations I had this week with people dealing with the intersection of aviation and politics inside the Beltway, there are reasons to believe GA will be better off in the 114th. There are definite plusses and minuses from the last election and setting aside the ideological issues and dealing with the practical, GA made some theoretical gains. Two new members, Barry Loudermilk of Georgia and former Gov. Mike Rounds of South Dakota are both AOPA members. Rounds will go to the Senate, Loudermilk to the House. The GA Caucuses in both chambers will have to be reconstituted but both are relatively large and, one hopes, potent. The Senate-side Caucus has about 40 members and the House has 253. AOPA reports that 32 of them will depart, either having lost elections, through retirements or moving on to other offices.

One of the defeated members was John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat who lost to a Republican challenger. Barrow was co-chair of the House GA Caucus and since these Caucuses are bi-partisan and co-chaired, the group will have to elect a new Democratic co-leader. Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat, also lost. But any person representing Alaska has to be pro-GA because the state relies on light aircraft to sustain itself. The good news is that Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, will remain as co-chair of the Caucus. Graves was one of the original co-sponsors of the stalled bill to reform the Third Class medical and has been an ardent GA supporter.

And that gets us to specific issues. It seems likely that the medical bill will come up again in the 114th and with strong majorities in both chambers-along with a Republican vow to relax regulation-it may stand a better chance of actually passing. That bill, if passed, would direct the FAA to essentially expand the light sport rule allowing driver’s license pilot certification to aircraft up to 6000 pounds. The FAA has steadfastly dug in its heels on this, even though an NPRM addressing the Third-Class medical is expected. One source told me that the proposed rule will fall short of what GA interests expected or hoped for. I don’t know the details of what’s in it, but I’m not expecting much. Personally, I’m quite happy to see Congress hold the FAA’s feet to the fire on this.

User fees? These have been and seem likely to remain a dead duck. Yes, the administration will probably propose them again in its budget, but if fees couldn’t get through a Congress with a Democratically controlled Senate, they’re even less likely to get through one with a Republican majority. While the alphabets may be warming to the idea of the NavCanada-style privatized ATC and that could be a backdoor to fees, my guess is that this isn’t going to come up in the next two years. And I’d bet on that one. There are too many larger issues on the plate requiring the Congress and administration to hold their noses and pretend to be bi-partisan.

One of these is infrastructure which, of course, includes airports and ground facilities. This broad area has proven to be bi-partisan, at least in terms of proposing bills, which have had co-sponsors from both parties. These have still failed, largely because of modern tribal politics that make Iraq look like Girl Scout summer camp. With a solid Republican majority that knows it has to accomplish something, perhaps 2015 will be the year. One can hope.

And some might also hope for this dream: someone sneaks in a rider on a big infrastructure bill requiring the FAA to move the 2020 ADS-B mandate back two years, such is the hand wringing over this issue. Could one someone who might try that be Sen. Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who now takes the chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee? Business aircraft interests won’t be unhappy with Inhofe either because as taxation of aircraft emissions gains traction in the EU, it won’t hurt to have a climate-change skeptic running this committee. (OK, so Inhofe is a self-avowed, unapologetic denier but you take your friends where you can find them. Inhofe authored the Pilot’s Bill of Rights after that little dustup at a closed airport in Texas, you’ll recall. Not GA’s finest hour, but the end game was positive. Welcome to GA realpolitik.)

As the rest of the world rapidly reforms and streamlines aircraft certification rules, the FAA continues to delay and drag on its FAR 23 rewrite. I’m not sure what Congress will do about this or what it even can do. The agency is grinding through the gears checking all the statutory boxes. Even the Europeans are ahead of us on this.

And everyone is ahead of us on the integration of UAVs into the national airspace. The Canadians just announced a new relaxation of UAV flight ops regulation and that buzzy sound you hear is U.S. companies moving their UAV R&D north of the border. To that end, Rep. Frank LoBiondo, a New Jersey Republican, was re-elected. As chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, he’s made UAV integration a personal crusade. With a majority in the Senate, he may have a little more leverage to keep the pressure up. He certainly doesn’t have any less.

On the overall budgeting front, there may be positives and negatives. If, with a one-party majority, the Congress can cure itself of continuing resolution budgeting, perhaps the FAA will benefit from more predictable reauthorization budgets. Heretofore, the agency has often not known when its funding would be approved nor how much. That’s a stupid way to run a railroad and an even stupider way to run an aviation system.

But what elections give, they take away. The Republican majority in both chambers is fractious and hardly cheek-to-cheek warbling Kumbaya. Many of the new members, not to mention the veterans who rode in on the 2010 Tea Party wave, made pledges to reduce spending. If their constituents expect them to deliver, the FAA might see reauthorizations with cuts. At the field level, FAA staff have already complained about being budget constrained and the people who pay for this are the maintenance facilities and avionics shops seeking routine approvals and any of a hundred small companies trying to get cert projects started. Regulatory reform would address this, as it in fact is in other countries, but not in the U.S. If the 114th Congress at least got the ball rolling in the right direction, we would all be better off.

Here’s hoping they pull it off. The clock is running.

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