Even as the federal government shutdown enters its seventh and final week, for most Americans, life has continued as normal. Remarkably, having large parts of the federal government shutdown for a month and a half has had limited impact on grocery stores, car dealerships, restaurants, retail stores, and many other parts of the economy. Yet there is one area of life where the shutdown did affect many ordinary Americans: air travel. (RELATED: Leadership Is the Key to Fixing Our Air Traffic Control Crisis)

Flight delays have gotten longer and more frequent in the past few weeks as TSA and air traffic controllers began calling in sick more, as they weren’t paid in October. The Secretary of Transportation reduced the number of flights that could be scheduled in order to maintain safety. Fewer and fewer flights were allowed as air traffic controllers and other personnel became scarcer. Pressure to reopen the federal government mounted as more Americans began to feel its effects.

While federal employees deemed “essential” are supposed to continue working, they can also quit their jobs entirely. Although they will be paid (including back pay) once the House passes the final Senate bill and the president signs it, one can hardly blame them for scrambling to find odd jobs and taking sick days to do so. Imagine if your employer said, “We’re going to skip your next two paychecks, but don’t worry, in six weeks we’ll pay you in full.”

There would be hell to pay if some company did that. Yet politicians in D.C., particularly Senate Democrats who were literally filibustering to keep the government shut down, did just that. Imagine if the federal government had been managing grocery stores or hospitals during the shutdown! The human collateral would have been swift and enormous.

We can be thankful that hospitals, grocery stores, and so many other services and businesses in our society are private. But this raises an important question: why on earth do we let the federal government run our aviation industry?

But providing air traffic control services and creating safety regulations are two different activities.

In the U.S., the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) manages air traffic controllers and gets its funding from Congress. So it focuses on keeping Congress happy. The ATO exists within the Federal Aviation Administration (a safety regulator), so it skews towards status quo safetyism rather than efficiency and innovation. But providing air traffic control services and creating safety regulations are two different activities.

Federal regulation makes some sense as air travel involves obvious interstate commerce. It is often better to have a single set of rules than 50 different ones. Air traffic controllers and security personnel, however, do not need to be federal government employees. Having air traffic controllers operate under a government agency has led to “excessive oversight” and a “lack of customer focus.”

Around the world, air traffic control (ATC) services have increasingly been privatized. In fact, “the United States is the last developed country that has not [separated air traffic services from safety regulators].” New Zealand, Canada, Belgium, and Switzerland (among others) have all privatized their air traffic control services years or decades ago.

The private sector can train, certify, and deploy air traffic controllers and provide security better and more cheaply than the federal government can. In fact, several studies have shown that non-governmental air traffic controller organizations spend less money and use better technology. The reasons are obvious: organizations respond to incentives.

If the ATO were governed by a board of airline reps and business leaders, and if it were funded by customers who use its services, we would quickly see better funding and more innovation, lower costs, and greater reliability. We would also see greater stability in service with little exposure to political games in D.C.

If the government shutdown teaches us anything, it is that we don’t want to rely on the federal government for basic market services like food, transportation, or medical care. Essential elements of our daily life should not be controlled by, or subject to, the whims of 40-some odd senators.

Even though the shutdown will end soon, it’s time we made air traffic control and air traffic safety efficient, effective, and private again!

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