Posted on 07/06/2007 3:30:42 PM PDT by GoldCountryRedneck
Bump
...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'!
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.
Thanks for the insight.
Mr. Bogeygolfer, I would like to add one thing to the responses that you were given.
If user fees we imposed for weather briefings, operations at towered airports, instrument approaches, etc., how would they collect the fees? As a flight instructor I fly hundreds of instrument approaches per month into little country airports. What organization are you going to create, staff and fund, to collect the fees for all those approaches? How will you monitor my activity?
I think I saw an e-pilot email from AOPA on this, so you may know about it.
I'm really beginning to hate that dimwit Lott. Hard to think of him as a 'Republican'.
Another case of "We're gonna ram this down like it or not."
Lott is a lotta' *&^%$@().....
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