Frank Lautenberg: “I hope we can test the will of the Senate and test the determination of the American people to have it done in a way…”

“I hope we can test the will of the Senate and test the determination of the American people to have it done in a way that satisfies them and their families. A reference was made by the distinguished Senator about what might happen if there was an accident, a crash, as a result of not having facilities up to snuff because of the bill not being passed. I will say if we look at the record in the U.K. and Canada about what happened after they turned those operations to business hands, to private hands, we will see that the number of near-misses went up substantially in the U.K. That means near-misses in the air. Many times I sit in the second seat on a small airplane and I want to tell my colleagues something, to find out where another airplane is at the last moment is a life-remembering event. In Great Britain, since privatization, near-misses of crashes or other problems have increased by 50 percent. There is something new of which I think we ought to be fully aware, and that is that the space between airplanes is being narrowed in the interest of taking more airplanes into the sky. This is no time to be saying, turn over our safety function, the maintenance function, to private hands, to Acme Air Service. I do not ask for a lot, but I ask for it on behalf of the American people, 71 percent of whom said they want to keep these services in Government hands because they know Government can manage it best. I want to be able to bring up an amendment and have it voted upon.”