Aviation User Fees - FReeper Help Needed! (Vanity)

This Flying FReeper (Catchy - should have used that as a sign-up name!), and other pilots here, need your help!

While congressional and grassroot wars have been raging around Illegal immigration, border security, and conduct of the War On Terror, another quieter, but important, battle is being waged which pits supporters of General Aviation (GA) against the airlines.

In a nutshell, the airlines want to take over the FAA function and funding. They want to do this by creating an Airline Transport Association-sponsored program named "Smart Skies". The resulting "panel of experts", comprised of airline executives, would result in billions of dollars in tax breaks- for the airlines.

Part of their funding would be provided by the imposition of crushing user-fees on General Aviation (GA). What we now pay for via aviation fuel taxes (which are already high - a gallon of aviation fuel locally is $4.44!) will be charged under the airlines plan.

Weather reports, flightplans, Instrument clearances, more landing fees, etc., etc., etc. would all be seperatly charged.

It will put much of GA financially out of reach of many. Flying will, as it is in Europe, become prohibitively expensive and more dangerous.

United Airlines, and others, have recently started campaigns to 'educate' the public about the need to implement their program. Their tactics include e-mailings to Frequent Flyers, media spots, and even inserts into on-board In-Flight magazines and literature. Airlines blame GA for delays, accidents, poor service, high ticket costs ad nausum. It's blatant lies, statistical spinnings, and fear mongering.

Here is how YOU can help: AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (of which I am a proud member) has designed a flyer (no pun) that YOU can add to the airlines' propaganda pouch which you will find as you travel. Simply print a few copies and add it to your carry-on and place it accordingly. That way both sides of the controversy is fairly presented.

Further articles about the controversy can be found at the AOPA Home Page and you don't have to be a member to bring up the stories there.

Remember that the Airlines routinely run their own businesses into bankruptcy and the taxpayers, directly or indirectly, are routinely tasked with bailing them out. Are these the folks that you want overseeing an air-traffic system, currently under the FAA, that is the envy of every other country in the world?

AOPA, together with EAA (Experimental Aircraft Association) and others are spearheading the fight against user fees. That Cessna overhead might be me, and I want to be able to keep flying it. So, helps us out....

The following is in part to be the devil’s advocate but partly to understand better. As I understood it the airlines pay a small fortune per flight with as many as several hundred passengers or 100x the amount paid by a single seater or small four seater and yet both use the same amount of services from the FAA. If that’s true (and it may not be) then from a purely conservative point of view this is much like our income taxes where the big money is subsidizing the private pilots. While that may hurt private aviation or even deal a death blow I’m not so sure I don’t agree based on principal. The bit about transferring the authority to a private or quasi govt organization is also a generally sound principal in most areas. In short I’m a bit lost and would appreciate more detail.

...In short I’m a bit lost and would appreciate more detail.

I'm happy you asked...

As I understood it the airlines pay a small fortune per flight....

During peak times the airlines monopolize the ATC system - 70% by their own numbers which are highly suspect. We think its' higher. Only 4% of the IFR clearances into major hubs (LAX,SFO, for example) were issued to general aviation during peak hours last year. We generally fly in good weather and can do so without ever contacting ATC-Airspace Rules permitting. Every scheduled carrier flight is an IFR, thus ATC intensive, flight.

So, no....GA is not "using the same amount of services". Then too, it's not the airlines, but their passengers who pay via ticket taxes.

At the same time, we're paying fuel taxes just like the airlines. We pay hanger leases and parking fees just like the airlines. We pay for examinations, flight training, certifications, renewal, insurance and registrations just like the airlines.

Big money (the airlines) thru the taxpayer, got mostly what they wanted when the ATC was first established. GA has had to jump thru hoops thru the years in order to maintain transparent co-extistance with the airlines so that we might have the privilege of sharing the same airspace.

Eisenhower set up the Interstate Highway system during the Cold War to move the military fast, if need be. Commerce development was a neat benefit. We enjoy it today as an example of Big Money (gov't) benefiting the common auto driver.

The airlines and GA both benefit by being able to share Gods airspace with a reasonable expectation of living to old age.

And moving the ATC to a private or quasi-gov't authority?

To quote Phil Boyer "The FAA likes the idea of user fees because they could serve as a source of funding that sidesteps the congressional budget process. The agency could then spend the money as it likes, without congressional scrutiny..."

The airlines like the idea because they would get a $4Billion dollar tax cut thru elimination of fuel and excise taxes currently paid for by passengers. At the same time, certain ATC functions and system development would be outsourced per the direction of the new agency.

Conservative that you are, you must realize that there are some functions, as I pointed out in my post, that demand the centralization, standardization, and accountability that government does afford. Air travel would become a dangerous tower of babble were bits and pieces farmed out to various vendors per the proposal.

Finally keep in mind that GA contributes $150 billion to the U.S. economy and supports almost 1.3 million jobs. Were trying to do our 'fair share'!

the airlines pay a small fortune per flight with as many as several hundred passengers or 100x the amount paid by a single seater

By the FAA's own numbers, published after a speech by FAA administrator Marion Blakey, the taxes paid per passenger to get from A to B is very close to the same for almost every sized airplane. The goal of User Fees is to give advantage to large airplanes. The larger, the better.

Also, many private aircraft don't use ATC services, flying from private airports with no towers, yet they will pay the price because this will dry up the aviation infrastructure as a whole, making parts and GA services non-existent.

Also: GA generally does not fly in the same airspace or from the same airports as airlines, so claims of conflict are greatly exageraged. If the airlines manage to kill GA, which is their goal, that won't open up anything for them, but merely empty a section of airspace and close small airports that don't have airlines now.

The bit about transferring the authority to a private or quasi govt organization is also a generally sound principal in most areas.

Not when it creates a monopoly, that is designed to aid a particular handful of companies, authorized in congress by lobbying money paid for by those companies. The law gives this new quasi government authority the power to spend money, and raise user fees at will to pay for their spending. Now *thats* a business model that pays, if you can get congress to give it to you.

The truth is that the airlines are deathly afraid of a new class of aircraft called the Very Light Jet (VLJ). By using smaller airport not used by airlines, air taxi operations using these jets can fly "charters by the seat" for almost the same price as the airlines. Since they avoid the anal exam of the MegaPort security, and since they can go directly from close airports without a stop at a hub airport, they can get you where you want to go considerably faster as well.

User Fees are specifically designed to kill these new businesses in their crib. The fees are nothing more than using the power of government to protect one set of businesses over another.

In the future, technology developed by NASA (Google "Small Aircraft Transportation System") will reduce, or possibly eliminate the humans of Air Traffic Control, drasticly reducing the price of government control. It is technically very possible that you could own, or share ownership, with a small aircraft that could get you distances of 200 to 1500 miles faster than an airline, as easily as you get in your car and drive somewhere. This User Fee fight is designed to halt any such future.

It is as if we are in 1910, and virtually all travel is by mass transit in trains and trolley cars, and these companies got together and found a way to legislate the auto companies out of business entirely. User Fees will kill the future of private air travel.

For those who worry about the security of this, just remember that 9/11 was done with almost million pound airliners, not small aircraft that can't do real damage. Just ask the kid who stole a Cessna and crashed into a building in a copycat of 9/11. He killed himself, and not a single other person. Big airplanes are a huge security risk because their size makes them genuine tools of mass destruction, small airplanes are not.

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