Nearly two years ago, an initiative led by former Mayor Francis Slay and visionary investors, brought forth a plan for St. Louis to not only acquire an Influx of cash but to become an innovator in the aviation field.
Just last month, the city declared that it is moving forward in its plan to privatize St. Louis Lambert International Airport by meeting with a team of consultants to “discuss sealed bids and related documents.”
Airport privatization is a contemporary idea in the United States, with Lambert being the second privatized primary airport if the plan moves through following San Juan Luis Muñoz Marín airport in Puerto Rico that underwent privatization in 2012.
Our aviation infrastructure is comprised of the Air Traffic Control (ATC), managed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the commercial airports owned by state and local governments.
Consequently however, there has been increase in aviation on a projected growth of 3.4 percent per year brought on by increases in airplane technology, safety, and afford-ability. However, this increase in volume has overwhelmed the outdated ATC and has lead to over congestions and frequent delays.
To support this heavily used infrastructure, American airports and the ATC rely on federal taxpayer subsidies as a primary source of funding.
However, in Europe, the model of the city having ownership of the airport and leasing it to a private operator, as proposed for Lambert, is common, with 47 percent of airports in the 28 European Union countries being private with Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and Brazil following by privatizing a majority of their airports.
In these privatized locations, the ATC has been reorganized to become independent organizations from the government and the airports rely on revenues from travelers, airlines, and other hospitality and concession corporations.
Airport privatization has worked incredibly well aboard for many reasons and America should look across the pond for inspiration to revamp public interest and approval of airports.
The Journal of Economic Literature found that “benefits of privatization include greater operating efficiency, improved amenities, and increased capital investment.”
These improvements would serve great help to America where the American Society of Civil Engineers recently reported an abysmal grade of D in a recent report.
Other government services such as the postal service have trended towards gross incompetence and failure to reform with the ever evolving world due to a lack of free market competition.
Privatization has shown in instances such as Britain to revitalize the aviation industry by increasing competition between privatized airports leading to “significant volumes of investment in necessary infrastructure, higher service quality levels, and a commercial acumen which allows airport operators to diversify revenue streams and minimize the costs that users have to pay” according to a study by the Airports Council International (ACI).
In an industry where timeliness is essential for success, the efficiency and productivity of the management team is crucial. Research from Oxford University in a study of 109 airports worldwide found that management were more passenger friendly at privatized airports and had increased productivity than their government bureaucrats.
Lastly, the opening of airports for private investments will increase the amount of private aid available to handle the high costs of airport remodeling and maintenance and can move the financing and risk management away from the hardworking taxpayers and towards financial experts in the private sector.
St. Louis is in a demanding situation as our airport has experienced a growth of travelers by 10 percent in 2016 and government funds do not increase proportionally as a region grows.
Useless government regulations have not helped in aiding our cities airport.
St. Louis is looking for other incentives to raise its appeal, but FAA regulations say that airports must use “non-aeronautical revenue” to pay for those incentives and privatization can eliminate some of these horrible regulations that are hampering the progress of our city.
Ultimately, the privatization of St. Louis Lambert International Airport can serve as the model needed in the necessary shift of moving the airport industry towards private enterprise that is necessary to evolve with today’s fast paced, market based economy and overcome the crumbling infrastructure facing our current airports.
