Air Traffic Control Reform Newsletter #55  Topics include:
separating safety regulation from ATC operations; re-regulation
the wrong approach to airline crisis; ADS-B: from Capstone to
what?; controllers and NextGen; affluent suburbanites vs.
airspace redesign; and other news.  In this issue:  Next
Administration: Liberate the ATO from FAA  For more than two
decades I have argued that air traffic control is a high-tech,
24/7 service business trapped inside a federal bureaucracy. Over
the past 20 years more than 40 countries have reached similar
conclusions, separating their air navigation service providers
(ANSPs) from their transport agencies, making the ANSP self-
supporting from direct charges paid by aircraft operators, and
in the process making a clear legal and organizational
separation between air safety regulation (inherently
governmental) and ATC service provision (a 24/7 business). But
this sensible reform has gotten practically nowhere in the
United States.  Next year we will have a new President an