User Fees again?

[Racegunz]

The big airports fund all the little ones.

I do smile at the 100K airplane line, though. I only know one person that owns a 100K airplane, and he rents it out for training to defray the cost. Maybe that was what most of them were worth when they were new, but our airfield is populated with Cessnas that would sell for half of that based on age and use. Maybe the restored Cub on the field could fetch 100K; put me down for two guys I know.

And I make no excuses for having flying as a hobby. Nobody should. We don't cast aspersions on the guy who buys a big RV, a custom bike, a bass boat with a big truck to pull it, jet skis, golf clubs, or any number of expensive things that go with useless hobbies.

Should we close boat ramps and marinas because most people can't afford a decent fishing or skiing boat? Charge a fee to them every time they contact the weather service, Coast Guard, or Fish and Game?

Yes, I fly because I can. It's a helluva good time, and one of the most personally rewarding things I've done. I shouldn't have to make excuses for it any more than I should have to pay some extra fee just because of it above the taxes I'm already paying.

If they charge ten bucks a landing, the hour of touch and goes is extinct. That's smart, ain't it?

If they charge ten bucks to open a flight plan and another ten to close it, they won't get filed. Even better!

I know of dozens of airplane owners that have 100k or close in their airplanes, Van's RVs mostly,and I'm a newbie to aviation so I figure you must know several too,there's been recent posts on this forum telling others to quit complaining about the price of the 100k plus LSA market, I can only guess what they have in theirs. The point I was trying to make was lost I guess, and I'm not asking anyone to apologize for anything, I'll fly out of a farmfield if I can't afford to do otherwise. Aviation is a rich man's sport/hobby that has a few options (for now) for the working class crowd (that's me and apparently you as well) down to ultralites if that's all you can swing. And with the info I'm finding on the.gov websites it's still the same answer. The big airports do seem to pay for the little ones, but it's the commercial customers paying for that price tag in passed on excise taxes. I do believe that users fees will kill GA as we know it, but it seems to be dying a slow death anyways with the dream getting further out of reach with every new regulation, and economics are playing a big part in it too.

[S3flyer]

Raceguns pointed out:

Air Traffic and Certification Fees (53% of FAA's total budget)[/h]

• Jet and turboprop flights currently subject to the ticket tax—including domestic, international, passenger, cargo, charter, air taxi, and fractional operators—would pay for their use of the air traffic system via terminal and enroute service fees. The proposal sets broad parameters for how these fees would be structured and how users would be consulted as they are established.
• Collecting fees to recover the cost of air traffic services is a widely accepted practicearound the world. Fees would be based on data derived from FAA’s cost accounting and allocation systems, and would cover nearly three-fourths of the Air Traffic Organization’s budget.
• To cover equipment, personnel, and other costs directly related to managing traffic in and around these facilities, our proposal gives FAA the authority to charge a limited, cost-based congestion fee for flights that land at the nation’s most congested airports.
• FAA would charge modest fees to recover the cost of some FAA certification services since current fees are set well below the cost of providing the service. Fees would cover 10% of the Aviation Safety organization’s budget, with 90% still covered by the General Fund.

Fuel and International Passenger Taxes (28% of FAA's total budget)[/h]

• GA and piston users will pay their fair share of FAA costs through a fuel tax, their preferred mechanism. The tax rates are based on a detailed cost allocation, and would change every two years in line with an updated cost allocation study.
• All domestic commercial and GA users will also pay a common fuel tax of 13.6 cents per gallon to fund AIP, the Essential Air Service program and FAA’s Research, Engineering and Development account. International commercial passenger flights will pay a $6.39 passenger head tax to fund these services.

General Fund Contribution (19% of FAA's total budget)[/h]

Which I'll accept as fact conceptially but is off in at least one area: taxes. Current aviation fuel taxes (irs.gov) are: $0.196 for avgas, $0.219 for Jet (for non-commercial operations) and $0.044 for Jet (commercial/airline operations). Note that GA pays approximately 5x the tax per gallon as the airlines.

Next, the above shows that 81% of budget is generated from various fees. I think we can agree that 53% come mostly from taxes levied at airports that have commercial operations. 28% comes from the fuel tax which I'll grant the majority is borne by commercial operations. Let's go nuts and say 95% (just a WAG)is commercial. This would mean that commercial ops fund 80% of the FAA budget.

But where does this money go? The AIP has granted about $1.3B to various airports throughout the US this year with at least $1B going to airports with commercial air service. This equates to 80% of the budget. My numbers could be off slightly since I spent only 10 minutes doing a manual review of the 900+ grants only assigning commercial grants to those airports I knew had scheduled service. I also filtered those grants above $1M (to around 250 lines iteams). Basically, I'm probably low-balling the commercial beneficiaries.

We could spend a lot more time arguing about a percent or two but it looks like the current system does a reasonable job of matching those who pay to those who get the benefit.

Another point -- the fuel tax example cited by the OMB for a flight from the LA to SF is entirely incorrect. In this case, the OMB is either grossly incompetent or avertly dishonest. You decide AOPA disputes the "$1300-$2000" cost and counters with a more accurate $68 (vs. $87 for a general aviation Gulfstream). Seeing as we can't trust AOPA either, let's figure it out ourselves:

AA schedules LAX->SFO for 1.25 hrs. A 737-800 burns 800 g/h which yields a total burn of 1000. At 4.4 cents per gallon this comes to $44.
I could not find a fuel burn for a Gulfstream so I went with an average Citation (200 g/h) which would take about 1.25 hrs as well. At 21.9 cents per gallon this comes to $55.

One should also break this down into to cost per person enjoying the ATC benefits. Let's put 100 people on the AA flight and 6 in the Citation. Commercial travel between LAX and SFO now costs only $4/person while GA is more than twice as much at $9/person. I would incur about $3 in fuel taxes in my Sting
In summary, commercial air operators are essentially getting back what they paid into the system. Corporate aviation easily pays 2x that of commerical airlines. Exactly what is a $100 User Fee supposed to fix? If there is a real revenue issue, then proportiately raise the fuel tax which seems to be applied equitably already. Or we should mount a movement so we only pay our fair share and cut our taxes so we are more in line with airline fees

[MEdwards]

I do smile at the 100K airplane line, though. I only know one person that owns a 100K airplane...

Frank, where's the "100K airplane line"? Is it quoted somewhere on these messages, or did you find it someplace else?

[MEdwards]

The Government says, "For example, a large commercial aircraft would pay between $1300 to [sic] $2000 in taxes for a flight from Los Angles [sic] to San Francisco while a corporate jet flying the same route and using the same FAA air traffic services would pay about $60 in taxes."

S3flyer's very useful message above shows us where the "about $60" comes from, from the fuel tax. Where does the $1300 to $2000 come from? Does that include the 10% ticket tax paid by each passenger? And does that assume a full widebody airliner making the flight?

[Mike M]

Collecting fees to recover the cost of air traffic services is a widely accepted practice around the world...our proposal gives FAA the authority to charge a limited, cost-based congestion fee...modest fees to recover the cost of some FAA certification services since current fees are set well below the cost...commercial and GA users will also pay ... to fund AIP, the Essential Air Service program and FAA’s Research, Engineering and Development...General Fund contribution would continue to pay for public good functions such as safety regulation, military use of air traffic services, and flight service stations....numbers there don't add up...

widely accepted practice? i've had foreign students come here - round-trip air fair, stay months - precisely because it's cheaper than the "widely accepted" death-of-a-thousand-cuts fees at home. some nations have beautiful but expensive flying clubs, others have people flying out of wholly-owned properties, but few have the mix of options we have here. i remember Athens in the mid-70's, about 25 light planes on the field. think they were at the reliever airports? WHAT reliever airports? Sorrento, mid-80's, still had WWII bombs in half of one sod runway because there wasn't enough use to merit bothering to dig them up. etc etc etc do we want what they have? cost, complexity, disuse? if so, here's a way to get it - fast.

limited fees? only because the camel is still young.

modest fees to cover certification? certification? isn't THAT is the prime "public-benefit" purpose of ALL the faa jobs? obviously the poster child for general fund support, and ONLY general fund support. i mean, get real, who benefits the most from certification? besides lawyers and bureaucrats, of course.

why should general aviation flights fund the essential air service and faa research and development? EAS should obviously come from ticket taxes alone! EAS only exists because politicians and the military demand air service to uneconomical points. and just read Sport Aviation to find out who's done the research and development for GA since 1953.

as to "the numbers don't add up"? well, what do we expect from a government so far in the hole we can see China through the bottom but is still digging, a government that hasn't passed a budget in years, a government that can't even count votes properly?

oh, wait a minute, the government is US!?!?!?!?!?!?!? never mind.

[7478ti]

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.