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  1. #1

    Join Date
    Nov 2011
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    Westfield, IN
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    User Fees again?

    Getting the flood of emails about user fees again, and of course the associated requests for money to prevent them. I really appreciate the various groups fighting against the fees, but it seems like this is becoming a yearly event. So, we are paying a yearly fee to prevent a fee. I'm not saying we need to give up the fight, but what is it going to take to finally end this so that it doesn't come up again?

  2. #2

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    Sep 2011
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    It seems that they will come year after year untill we become lazy, Lack of Apathy by not recruiting young aviators or are busy infighting amoug ourselfs about about who should be in the Magazine

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by rawheels View Post
    what is it going to take to finally end this so that it doesn't come up again?
    Just to hazard a guess, probably a POTUS that is a private pilot.

  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by Zack Baughman View Post
    Just to hazard a guess, probably a POTUS that is a private pilot.
    doubt it.

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  5. #5

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    I just got another AOPA alert on this subject and it is really getting old. This keeps coming up because we have a party that won't pass any major bills under the current President. The Nextgen funding bill is suppose to take the FAA forward with a long term plan to upgrade ATC, user fees are buried in this pile of paperwork. We have plenty of congressional support to keep user fees out coming from both parties, but we've got 80 "representatives" who will not vote for any long-term spending, so we get all these little short-term funding bills that bring up the big issues every 3 months. This is why the public approval rating for congress is at an all time low!

    Joe

  6. #6

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    Aug 2011
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    Sorry, the POTUS is the wrong guy to look to.

    Congress is the focus; it's the lack of folks with general aviation ties that causes concerns.

    This is why AOPA and EAA efforts with the aviation caucus is so critical.
    The opinions and statements of this poster are largely based on facts and portray a possible version of the actual events.

  7. #7

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    It does seem like most of the recent emails are pointing fingers at the President this time. Maybe he thinks he can get some PAC money from EAA & AOPA for the election campaign.

  8. #8

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    Nov 2011
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    If I'm reading it right it's a hundred dollars every use of ATC services? What exactly is that considered? and how many non commercial pilots actually use ATC? Sure would make it tough around a Class-B,C airspace but a boom for the smaller dying airports, hangars would be full from big city/airport exodus.

  9. #9

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    May 2012
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    It is going to take fundamental adjustment to the current obsolete ATS system, both nationally and globally. Wasteful costs were unnecessarily built in to the airspace separation processes over the past 80 years. Those unnecessary costs were also built in to related archaic supporting infrastructure (e.g., Outdated Navaids, radars, and ATS essentially hand separating airplanes nearly 1:1, and jurassaic 2 way party line voice com). Even NextGen as presently configured is unlikely to fix the problem. NextGen doesn't yet fix the excessive "Cost per unit separation service" and unnecessarily expensive infrastructure that is ultimately leading to demands for GA user fees. In fact, current ill-advised plans to misuse ADS-B for "pseudo radar" could even make it worse in the long run. Hence the fully allocated costs (if truthfully examined) of the currently provided services, and even for NextGen, even for VFR VMC aircraft are and will be far higher than fee income collected. The problem is further compounded by some organizations in GA inappropriately still supporting entirely obsolete and wasteful systems or procedures like the $4B dollar WAAS system (which has been unnecessary since 30+ SVs are flying and SA is off), and LPV (which just wastes airspace with its outdated angular straight-in procedures, versus the much more efficient, and lower cost, and infinitely better "RNP" procedures, which even the smallest GA aircraft could have already been using). So at least some of GA's problem with this fee issue is due to still advocating for outdated and expensive concepts that we no longer need, and no longer need to pay for. It is time for GA to wake up and start getting serious about advocating for the real change that is needed in NextGen and SESAR (like dumping WAAS, EGNOS, and LPV, and instead adopting RNP and GLS for GA, and introducing the needed data links, in some modern equivalent version to the old Narco Mark 12, ....and simplifying and consolidating FSS functions etc.. Then and only then will we have any real chance of successfully and reasonably addressing the user fee issue. But the user fee issue isn't going to go away if we stay on our present GA course.

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