US: Trump air-traffic plan hits turbulence, skeptics in Congress

For President Donald Trump to succeed with his plan to place the air-traffic system outside government, he will need to win over lawmakers like Jerry Moran, a deeply conservative Republican senator from Kansas. So far, it doesn’t look good for the president. "I remain entirely opposed to privatizing air-traffic control," Moran said Monday in an interview just hours after Trump unveiled one of the signature elements of his plan to revamp US infrastructure. The president delivered a fiery denunciation of the existing flight-monitoring system and urged Congress to place it under a nonprofit corporation funded by new fees. But opposition of lawmakers like Moran -- who represents a state that is home to private-plane manufacturers -- combined with near-universal hostility to the idea by Democrats, makes it all but impossible to reach the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate. “I would say slim to none,” Craig Fuller, an aviation consultant who has monitored the fight over air-traffic control for years, said of the proposal’s chances. “I think it’s very difficult to get it done for a number of reasons.” For one thing, there is a split in the industry. Airlines such as American Airlines and Southwest cheered the president’s plan. But groups representing private-plane manufacturers, such as General Dynamics’s Gulfstream Aerospace, which worry about the service smaller airports would receive, issued statements saying it would have a negative impact on aviation. <br/>