With your Gulfstream vectored to the localizer and cleared for the approach at FL 330, you drop the main gear, call for positive flaps, deploy the Spey's thrust reversers, and push the nose over to a 22-degree negative angle of attack. Egads! With the flaps extended above the wing-like spoilers, airspeed pegs at 250 knots, and you set up a 10,000-fpm rate of descent. As the altimeter unwinds dizzyingly, you allow approach speed to build to 300 knots, then with the runway threshold looming in the windshield, call for down-flaps to begin breaking the descent.

The National Air Traffic Controllers Association has already gone on record vociferously opposing user fees as a funding mechanism for the FAA and, especially, for ATC.

For more than a year, a great confrontation expected to be decided a year from now has been escalating between long-term antagonists over the classic prize of turf and how it will be governed and administered.