A Serious Discussion on Aviation Funding …
… should include a serious discussion about funding – in the general media, that is. On Sunday, Yahoo! was pushing an Associated Press article with a San Francisco dateline entitled, “Traveler taxes awarded to small airports.” In sum, the article was offering as a foregone conclusion that airline passengers had been bilked for billions via the feds to underwrite “small airports used mainly by private pilots and globe-trotting corporate executives.”
The article quotes Robert Poole, president of the respected think-tank, Reason Foundation, who indeed sides more with the airlines’ funding argument that business aviation needs to pay more for its use of the system. And, it is true that FAA through the years has made millions in infrastructure investments at general aviation airports. Some of those investments may be questionable; in fact, FAA’s funding proposal calls for rethinking how GA airports are funded, or prioritized. Needless to say, projecting where infrastructure investment is best made in a system of airports is not an exact science. (Community follow-through plays large in long-term success.)
Yet it is a system. Airports and user groups seem to best appreciate this fact, living day to day the relief that GA facilities provide to the commercial airline system of airports. In an AP article that attempts to represent the voices of various industry groups, there is never any mention of the system and how it interrelates. Little mention is made of the economic development created or facilitated in many communities because of many of these “small” airport investments. (The one instance: How an AIP grant helped a former Air Force base, now Plattsburg (NY) International Airport, succeed in attracting tenants. This angle, however, is downplayed.)
Congressional leaders are considering whether or not the way aviation is funded needs to be changed. It would be helpful if their constituents were hearing a couple of the key elements of the story. Thanks for reading. jfi
Thanks. Someone in the media is finally providing some balance on the FAA funding issue. Through all the discussion on this over the last number of months, I’ve been asking: “If everyone is going to be paying their ‘fair share’, then is everyone entitled to the same rights to use any of the national airspace facilities?” In other words is a Cessna 150 with one soul on board to get the same prioritization for ATC services as a Boeing 747 with 300 souls on board. I can imagine the tower tape conversation now…
Tower, 747 heavy requesting landing with the numbers.
747 heavy, tower – proceed to holding point Alpha. We have priority handling for a C150 that contacted us ahead of you.
Tower, 747 heavy, do you know how much fuel I’m burning up here?
Tower, C150 – Turning downwind and this will be a full stop. Send the bill for ATC service with the same rate for the 747 heavy to my home and I’ll be requesting progressive to the fuel pumps to pay the same fuel tax rate as the 747 heavy…
Of course that might seem a bit silly but isn’t equity in rates what the airlines are asking for? So it seems right that there will be equity for all users of the national airspace system (finally). After all, a radar blip is just another radar blip - isn’t it?
The AP story only presented a small part of the overall use of funds. What about areas like Alaska who operates 279 airports in rural areas that have no road system and no economic infrastructure, at least as the rest of the Lower 48 knows it. These airports are maintained and improved with AIP dollars that are matched by the state.
If user fees are implemented the price of fuel, and fees will curtail inter-village transportation, in addtition to adding to the cost of living in Bush Alaska.
I think the reporting was lopsided and reaked of lofty elitist style journalism. The writer/reporter although a Pulitzer prize winner twice, and a journalism fellow of Harvard, and Columbia should have taken a look at how much business on those airport contribute to local economies. Not how flying a plane and using the GA airport infrastructure is for the rich.
No airports, less taxation, no infrastructure… as one AOPA official put it, my airplane doesn’t need the 11,000 feet of runway at our airport!
I believe federal investment in all NPIAS airports irrespective of the airport’s function should be a permanent part of FAA spending. This should be done regardless of whatever elaborate collection schemes are cooked up. NPIAS airports are considered important to the nation as a whole by their inclusion into the airport system. In a lot of cases these are airports that had airline service before passengers came to be regarded as self-sorting cargo. The fact that corporations have had to create their own transportation systems and are using those ‘no-longer-served’ airports speaks loudly to me as to the kind of airline service we have gotten for the unrestrained market airlines were given by deregulation. Fuel taxes and ticket/passenger facility charges are reliably collectable user fees that are already in place. Realistic changes to the amounts charged for these user fees seem more evenhanded than an expensive replacement of an entire system of collection.