The Incompetence of the Bush Administration; Aviation Edition

If you are interested in aviation and you have not been reading Don Brown's blog "Get the Flick," you are missing a view of how aviation works from the point of view of an air traffic controller.

He has had a front-row view of how the Bush Administration has run a vital public service and his view of their performance is: FAIL!

From the point of view of the recreational pilots, the destruction of the system of Flight Service Stations (FSS) has been one of the worst moves made by the Bush Administration. Every pilot talks to FSS at some time or another, whether by telephone for pre-flight briefings or by radio for weather updates. Bush destroyed the FSS system and handed over the function to Lockheed-Martin as a way to "improve performance" and "save money."

The first part was an utter crock. There have been times when it has taken over a half-hour to talk to a FSS briefer and when you did get a briefer, the person on the other end of the line had no better understanding of the local conditions than George Bush had of the conditions in Iraq. Lock-Mart's incompetence drove pilots to either using DUATS or else looking at the weather on the Weather Channel and then checking the Notices to Airmen (NOTAMs) on web sites. The second part is bullshit, for as Lock-Mart now has a stranglehold on the FSS service, they are ratcheting up their bill to the FAA.

(You know, of course, that sooner or later, some GOP asswipe is going to say 'let the pilots pay for it." And when pilots don't and opt for other sources of information, they will make it a violation of FAA regs not to call Lock-Mart prior to every flight.)

From the point of view of the professional pilots, the sheer arrogance and incompetence of the Bush Administration has resulted in the degradation of the Air Traffic Control system. The Bushies refused to negotiate with the controllers's union and imposed its own version of a "contract." The folly here is that if you remember the mass firings of controllers by Bush's God, Ronald Reagan, and then look at the calendar, you can easily see that all of the controllers hired after that are retiring. The "work rules," imposed by the idiots appointed by the Tsar of the Baboons run from the petty to the onerous, from dress codes imposed on people who work in windowless rooms, unseen by everybody, to mandatory overtime and seven-day work weeks.

It should come as no surprise that as controllers are reaching their early retirement date, they are. More are quitting before then, fed up with the picayune petty-ass chickenshit imposed by Bush Administration political appointees, people who could go broke selling cold drinks during a heat wave.