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Good point, landing fees are probably not the way to go. On the other hand I KNOW that there would be a market for air traffic control. Based on personal experience, (I work at an airport) airports large enough to need 24/7/365 ATC probably have sufficient revenue to deal with it on their own without a problem. Beyond that, how and how much they bill for services is up to them to figure out. That's the beauty of full privatization, competition will eventually end upkeeping the prices reasonable. As for the smaller airports, at least around me, the towers generally close at night around 10:00 anyway. After that, you can still take off and land as if they were an uncontrolled fields. As far as Germany goes, I'm not willing to compare them to us. I don't want to let the government have any chance to mess it up here like has happened over there. We have a wonderful chance to learn from their mistakes. Therefore, I believe in all or nothing, partial privatization doesn't work well, just ask California. Finally I don't pretend to know what GWB is doing, but I do support privatization of just about anything for any number of reasons. Primarily, If I didn't see anything about it in the constitution then I really don't see it as the federal government's job. Second, I'm not a big fan of the government spending lots of MY money on things that don't work too well and I don't think that the private sector could really be that much worse. Before I go off on a political tangent though, I guess it all boils down to money. If you have any bright ideas on a better way to bill for air traffic control then let me know. Who knows, I might just start an ATC company if I can just figure that part out. Chris ================================================================== TO UNSUBSCRIBE go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm
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