Maybe The Should Have Included Air Traffic Control in the Transportation Bill

In a previous post I talked about the new transportation bill and how it included funds for a North Dakota Peace Garden and a Las Vegas History Museum but excluded funds for an upgraded air traffic control system. Yesterday we saw a sample of what's to come given the aging system that's creaking along under the increasing air traffic load:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Communications equipment failed Tuesday at a regional air-traffic control center, shutting down all airline traffic within 250 miles of Memphis and causing a ripple effect across the country that grounded dozens of passenger and cargo flights.

The problem started when a major telephone line to the Memphis center went out at 12:35 p.m. EST. The Federal Aviation Administration said air-traffic control operations were back to normal about three hours later.

Air-traffic control centers in adjacent regions handled flights that were already in the air when the problem was discovered.

"The airspace was completely cleared by 1:30 (p.m.) Eastern time," FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said.

High-altitude flights through the region - which includes parts of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Missouri, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee - were discontinued while the equipment was being fixed.

"What we did is put a ground stop in place for any flight that would transition through that airspace. We held them on the ground wherever they were, whether it was Miami, Seattle, Los Angeles, Boston," Bergen said.

The FAA's action had a ripple effect in several airports.

It rippled all the way to Little Rock where it grounded the private jet that was to take the non-lesbian Hillary Clinton to Chicago for a campaign speech. As a Senator, I'm glad she got to see an example of what happens when you allow meaningless tripe in the transportation bill while excluding the important stuff.