FAA & Congress Members Respond to $500,000 "Ransom" for AirVenture

[FloridaJohn]

The fee being asked for is for air traffic controller lodging and travel. They are not asking for any of the salaries for controllers at OSH, not to mention overtime to cover them at their facilities, and overtime at places like MKE and Chicago TRACON.

Wrong. The fee includes travel, lodging, salaries for the ATC at OSH, AND overtime to cover their shifts at their home fields.

There are about 100 controllers that come to OSH, so the nearly $500,000 fee from the FAA results in a cost of around $5,000 per controller. That is a little high for just travel and lodging, even for the government.

The logic of your super bowl and Christmas time scenarios doesn't apply because there is no cost to move or lodge controllers since they already work there.

There is still overtime to pay, and for events like the super bowl, I would be very surprised if they didn't bring in extra controllers from somewhere else. It's not like these ATC facilities have that amount of extra capacity just sitting around waiting for the super bowl to come back to town every 5-10 years.

Also, everyone who voted for smaller government take a long look in the mirror. You wanted it, this is what it looks like.

I'm all for smaller government, but this is not what it looks like. What everyone seems to forget, is this is a service we have already paid for in advance. Every time you pump a gallon of Avgas, twenty cents goes directly to pay for ATC services. Oshkosh air traffic control services were already budgeted in the annual FAA budget (and have been for decades). The fact that there is more air traffic every year around the last week of July in Wisconsin is a surprise to no one.

I don't understand how smaller goverment means we get to pay twice for everything. Seems like the exact opposite to me.