Clinton Order Takes Aim at Crowded Skies

Dec. 7 -- President Clinton is expected to issue an executive order today creating a new division within the Federal Aviation Administration charged with easing flight delays and cancellations, ABCNEWS has learned.

The order would create the Air Navigation Services Organization, essentially a performance-based organization within the FAA. It will be composed of FAA Air Traffic Services and Research and Acquisition divisions that also have day-to-day involvement with air traffic control.

The administration is hoping to help eliminate delays and inefficiencies within the system, which handles 93,000 take-offs and landings each day. Delays have increased 58 percent since 1995, and cancellations are up 130 percent in that same time.

The new body will be headed by a chief operating officer yet to be chosen and a five-member subcommittee consisting of John Cullinane, former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, Leonard Lynn of the United Steelworkers of America, Martha Stewart Living Chief Operating Officer Sharon Patrick and John Snow, chairman and CEO of CSX Corporation, a transportation services firm.

5-Year Plan

The COO, with the subcommittee, will set up an annual performance agreement for organizational and individual goals as well as targets for achieving them, and develop a five-year strategic plan, ABCNEWS has learned.

The body will answer to the FAA, which will retain responsibility for aviation safety and security.

The administration is calling the move a necessary, but not sufficient step, toward dealing with the problems of air traffic control.

Thumbs Up

The approach rejects the privatization route taken by some countries, a decision welcomed by the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).

“NATCA is in complete agreement with the administration’s position that air traffic control is inherently governmental,” said NATCA President John Carr.

“This executive order illustrates that the FAA has the latitude to achieve efficiencies needed without the short-sighted and ill-conceived notion of privatization,” said Carr.