What changes would Libertarians make to the FAA's flight rules?

Great Debates
1

I pose this question out of pure curiosity since I’m neither a libertarian nor a person with a serious grudge against it. But I am a professional pilot, so I know something about how and why our system of air traffic control and flight rules work.

The FAA is a federal agency, and I don’t see how it could be otherwise and still function in its role of controlling the flow of air traffic. I am unable to imagine how it would work if flight rules were left to the individual states *. Looking around on message boards, I see some discussion of how the airlines could be overseen by private entities who would inspect them and issue safety recommendations and “seals of approval”. I could see that possibly working for maintenance and customer satisfaction, but not for the actual separation and safe flow of air traffic.

Flights occur over long distances domestically and internationally. The Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) are derived from civil code and set down the rules for domestic flight. We also participate in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which, among other things, standardizes the rules to some extent throughout the world. For example, the standard language of air traffic control throughout the world is English. That’s a heavy piece of conformity, especially if English isn’t one of the main languages spoken in your country. But it seems most parties have agreed that it improves safety and is a necessary measure. And I assume we want an air traffic system that functions well for those flying the planes and for passengers who choose to fly.

The FAA is a very unpopular agency with some people, especially among many pilots. They’ve pissed me off personally at times. But even at its worst I have to acknowledge that it seems to get the job done. We have an extremely busy and quite safe system by all metrics I’m aware of. So how do the board’s Libertarians feel about the FAA as far as the flight rules go? Can you live with it? If not, what would you change and why?

  • I’ll do have one crazy idea on this subject which I’ll expand on if this thread garners any interest.
2

I should add that I’m a very causal reader of our threads about Libertarianism. Please feel free to correct any mistaken assumptions I’ve made. From what I can tell (and acknowledging that it can be hard to pin down any firm definition of “true” Libertarianism), a garden variety Libertarian is OK with federal control of essential functions related to national defense and a few other things.

It’s from that standpoint that I posed my question. Let me know if it should be re-framed.

3

Extrapolating from other things I’ve seen Libertarians say:

You would negotiate a fee with the owner of each piece of land you fly over and each of them would have their own rules as to who could fly through their airspace and when.

Okay, that’s obviously snark, but it seems to fit with the more radical forms of libertarianism.

4

I am a libertarian of sorts and an aviation enthusiast. There isn’t anything in libertarian philosophy that is against the existence of the FAA in general. The idea and the basic design would be the same because libertarianism allows for several types of federal functions where it makes the most sense and aviation is one of those. Only radical libertarians would change it significantly. They are few in number but get a lot of attention giving the rest of us a bad name. Libertarians might argue against some specific FAA rules but we would have to talk about those individually. Overly strict and expensive certification procedures for private aircraft and their accessories would be one area that libertarians may want to relax some but that has already been done by the FAA itself to a degree with the Light Sport Aircraft category.