Chaos in the Air: Who Pays?
Small planes may foot more of the bill for traffic control
The funding debate pits big commercial airlines against smaller operators as well as the business community and hundreds of thousands of U.S. hobby fliers backed by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, a lobbying powerhouse.
The smaller groups claim the big airlines would pay $150 million less in fees than they do now under the Senate plan. Some rural air taxis, like Bettles Air in Alaska, use the very turbine jets that would get strapped with new fees. "We also think the $25 user fee is just the camel's nose under the tent," says Phil Boyer, president of AOPA. In Europe, Boyer says, small planes pay $1,000 just to land at London's Heathrow Airport, and jets can be subject to takeoff, en-route, and noise fees.
Still, the big airlines say their smaller counterparts are not paying their fair share: Although general aviation planes are responsible for 16 percent of the costs of the air traffic control system, the FAA says, they now pay only about 3 percent of the taxes that go into the trust fund, and private-jet traffic is expected to triple in the next decade. "Everyday passengers," says Blakey, "shouldn't have to keep picking up the tab of our CEOs."
General aviation advocates, meanwhile, blame the high costs on the airlines' hub-and-spoke networks, which require more sophisticated systems for controlling many planes in the same place at once.
The House plans to tackle its own funding scheme next month. Costello, leading the effort there, is more hostile to user fees and says he's "not convinced" the current system can't cover the tab for modernization. Senators, meanwhile, have tossed in another hot potato-a "passenger bill of rights" that would force airlines to provide water and food to passengers stuck on the tarmac on delayed planes. That's just one more issue that needs to be resolved before September 30, when the current funding taxes expire. "Everybody agrees" the system needs upgrading, said Sen. Trent Lott, an author of the Senate bill, "but everybody also says, 'I won't pay for it!'"
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