Invest in Rail - Stop Funding Airports that Serve a Privileged Few

Miki Barnes
April 16, 2021

President Biden has warned that China is going to "eat our lunch" when it comes to infrastructure development. In response he is offering strategies that "will make the United States more competitive in the face of Chinese President Xi Jinping's massive infrastructure building campaign." One of the areas in which the U.S. lags behind is high speed rail. While the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) continues its decades long pattern of flinging public money with abandon at U.S. general aviation airports - facilities that primarily benefit for-profit flight training companies, affluent private pilots, and recreational, business, corporate and charter jet owners - China and other countries are investing in rail.

Click on High Speed Rail development by country (1976-present) for a brief 2 minute and 20 second video showing the extent to which the U.S. trails China, Japan and a number of European countries in investing in rail alternatives.

To President Biden's credit, his "...$2 trillion infrastructure package has two provisions involving passenger rail: $85 billion to modernize public transit (commuter rail, buses, stations, etc.) and $80 billion to improve and expand the nation's passenger and freight rail network."

Oregon Promotes China's Infrastructure Expansion

A prime example of the obscene waste of transportation funds is the millions of dollars funneled by the FAA and State of Oregon into subsidizing the Port of Portland's general aviation airports, facilities designed in large part to create an empire for one man - Max Lyons. Lyons owns Hillsboro Aviation and also manages Hillsboro Aero Academy, an international flight school that trains foreign pilots out of both the Hillsboro and Troutdale Airports. The FAA and State of Oregon have also pumped millions of dollars into the Redmond Airport where Hillsboro Aero Academy trains Chinese pilots. By contrast, other countries, as shown in the video link above, especially China, have invested in massive rail networks that far outpace the U.S.

The irony of it all is that while neglecting high speed rail and other less polluting and environmentally sustainable alternatives, and while also failing to address toxic emissions released by student and private pilots in its so-called Clean Air policies, Oregon has chosen instead to fuel China's massive growth agenda by throwing its support behind businesses like Hillsboro Aero Academy (HAA), a company that boasts of training pilots from over 75 countries and also contracts with China's state owned airlines to train their pilots. Running pipelines through tribal, recreational, and privately owned lands to send natural gas to Asian markets and the clear cutting of Oregon's forests to provide timber for China's infrastructure expansion also demonstrates the willingness of Oregon and the U.S. to degrade the environment, diminish the rights of local residents, and exploit its own citizenry to bolster China's infrastructure build-up.

Hillsboro Aero Academy Expands Foreign Pilot Training

The excerpt below from a 12/18/2020 article, Oregon Flight School Receives Vietnam Training Nod, sheds light on the extent to which Hillsboro Aero Academy profits from providing instruction to student pilots from China and other Asian countries, including Korea and Japan. HAA also trains Taiwanese students.

"Oregon-based Hillsboro Aero Academy (HAA) has received approval from the Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) to conduct professional pilot training in accordance with CAAV regulations. The move will allow Hillsboro to accept Vietnamese students to its flight academy campuses.

It will also build on the company's presence in the Asia-Pacific region, as it already holds certification from China's Civil Aviation Authority (CAAC) and conducts pilot training for Air China, China Eastern, Shandong Airlines, and Sichuan Airlines. Korean Air is also a client and the company attracts many students from Japan."

In addition, a November 2020 press release from Hillsboro Aero Academy revealed plans to train helicopter pilots on behalf of the European Union, and in February of 2021 HAA announced the launch of a new Certified Flight Instructor (CFI) completion program "largely in response to growing demand from international flight students."

Meanwhile the American people not only foot the bill for U.S. airport infrastructure, air traffic control towers, and FAA employees, including air traffic controllers, they also bear the brunt of negative health impacts such as noise, environmental pollution, and lead emissions, as well as safety and security risks posed by this activity. In short, the Port's collusion with the FAA, the state of Oregon, and the aviation industry in colonizing our skies to further the interests of crony capitalists and foreign governments demonstrates a pervasive disregard for livability, democracy, the environment and the long term health and well-being of the planet.

To remedy this situation, monies from the FAA Airport Improvement Program (AIP), along with CARES Act and American Rescue Plan allotments for aviation, as well as money set aside in the American Jobs Act, should be diverted away from the 1/4 of one percent of the population certified to pilot general aviation aircraft and redirected, instead, to environmentally responsible alternatives such as high speed rail - a mode of transportation that serves the greater good rather than foreign governments, out-of-state corporations and a privileged few affluent airplane, helicopter and jet owners.