Source: nbaa.org, Editor, First Published Nov 03rd, 2025
Although the federal government is now reopened, its effects continue to ripple across the aviation system. A flight safety expert who has worked around the world says recent calls to privatize America’s air traffic control (ATC) system are shortsighted and risky.
Chris Metts, who has worked on aviation issues in the private sector and government for 35 years, says the reason for concern is simple: privatized systems are vulnerable to economic pressures that force cost-cutting at the expense of safety and efficiency.
Metts spent more than a dozen years at the FAA in the U.S. and Asia. He served as the agency’s VP of U.S. Air Traffic Operations during the 9/11 attacks. He has also worked on flight safety internationally as the transportation specialist at the U.S. embassies in China, Japan and Singapore.
“As we’ve watched other countries privatize, it would be important for us to just watch how those [air traffic] organizations are subject to the economy,” he recently told Salt Lake City’s CBS station, KUTV.
That’s evident in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand – all of which have privatized their ATC systems and grappled with chronic controller shortages, technology gaps, operational delays and safety concerns.
NBAA President and CEO Ed Bolen made this point during a recent appearance on Bloomberg TV.
“When we look at countries around the world which have privatized their air traffic control system – we see a number of challenges in terms of their air traffic controllers, their technology, their delays and most importantly, safety issues,” Bolen told Bloomberg’s “Wall Street Week.”
The right approach, experts and aviation stakeholders say, is maintaining the government-industry partnership that has kept American airspace the safest in the world while continuing to invest in modernization.
NBAA and nearly 60 other aviation groups formed the Modern Skies Coalition, calling for strategic investment in a brand-new ATC system, rather than privatizing the current one.
Industry leaders are unified: the answer isn’t privatizing ATC but investing in what already works.
Others have made an effective case for modernization and against privatization in recent days, including a longtime advocate for free-market policies who told the Wall Street Journal this week that calls for ATC privatization “distract from real solutions.”
