Does the FAA know best?

Does the FAA know best?

The only thing we know about air traffic controllers is that when we’re in an airplane we trust the men and women in control towers with our lives.

For all we know, concentrating more controllers in Cleveland and fewer in Youngstown, Toledo, Akron and Mansfield could make flying even safer. Or maybe it wouldn’t.

And that’s the problem with the recently announced plan by the Federal Aviation Administration to move the work of some air traffic controllers at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport and other airports to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport in about five years. Even though it’s five years away, one gets the impression that it is close to fait accompli. There’s little evidence that private pilots, working controllers or even the military who might be affected has had any input into the FAA’s plans.

Of course, running a federal agency that bears an enormous responsibility for the safety of American pilots — civilian, commercial and military — and passengers is not subject to popular vote. But a little more transparency and a recognition that not every decision arrived at unilaterally by Washington bureaucrats is necessary the best decision is in order.

If the FAA’s plan for consolidating at Hopkins a satellite- and GPS-based system for tracking planes in the air in Northern Ohio will clearly improve safety without devaluing regional airports, fine.

But if it makes it more difficult for smaller airports to serve their air traffic, that would be a problem that should be on the radar screen of every northern Ohio member of Congress, every chamber of commerce, every mayor or county commissioner, and every pilot.