President's Position

It was one of those upbeat days, just a couple of months ago, when I felt that we were making progress on the user fee issue. President Clinton's fiscal year 2000 budget called for user fees on airline operations of $7 billion over five years — but for the first time it exempted general aviation (see " President's Position: User Fees, Again?" March Pilot).

Your association is against user fees on any segment of aviation, because "user fee creep" has taken place in other countries that have gone down this same path. However, the administration's recognition of GA is due in large part to AOPA's explaining to the politicians that GA is merely an incremental user of an air traffic control system designed and built for the airlines.

What ruined my day — and created the need for subsequent research and publicity — was an item labeled "Aviation Intelligence" that was published in one of the daily industry "insider" newsletters that primarily cover the commercial aviation business. This publication is widely read by Capitol Hill staff and those in Congress who deal with aviation legislation. Much to my dismay the headline read, "General aviation has been driving the FAA workload." In one fell swoop this headline conveyed an incorrect image of our use of the air traffic control system — and that image could come back and haunt us in the future. The short article stated that tower operations in the United States had grown 2.5 percent last year, while GA's tower operations grew 3.3 percent.

These comments came from the FAA's Office of Aviation Policy and Plans, which keeps the statistics on both commercial and general aviation activity. Each year it publishes two volumes that summarize trends over the past few years and project aviation activity for the next 10 years. These reports form the basis for two annual FAA conferences, addressing each segment of aviation: the Commercial Aviation Forecast Conference and the General Aviation Forecast Conference. Frankly, the growth projections have never been correct in the decade I have been reading the material, but that's another story.

In hindsight, the FAA source of that "GA is driving the FAA workload" sound bite acknowledged that the word driving might have been a little strong. However, the damage was in print.

AOPA has always attended the GA Forecast Conference, where the full report is distributed and two days of panel discussions and speeches take place with industry and political attendees. Fortunately, I was scheduled to appear on a lead-off panel following the FAA's presentation of its report. Led by AOPA Vice President of Government and Technical Affairs Dennis Roberts, the staff began poring through not only the GA report, but the FAA Commercial Aviation Forecast report that had been released a month earlier. We quickly uncovered the fact that no one at the FAA had publicly compared the two studies. Well, AOPA did, and the results were presented at the GA conference in April.

First, AOPA pointed out that the FAA's studies project that commercial aviation will grow at a much more rapid rate, and that is what is going to put the pressure on the air traffic control system. It also seemed appropriate to remind everyone at the GA forecast conference that when they think of general aviation, they should get their heads out of the flight levels. The majority of GA is personal flying under visual flight rules in single-engine, fixed-gear aircraft. And, even though the industry is excited about the deliveries of GA aircraft, let's not forget that we are a far cry from the 17,000 units delivered annually in the late 1970s. Last year saw 2,220 GA aircraft delivered, but the big dollars came from turbine aircraft shipments.

The FAA data also projected that while the GA fleet size would grow 25 percent in the next 10 years, there would be an 89-percent increase in airline fleet size. By 2010, airline and commuter IFR departures will increase 45 percent, but GA operations will increase a modest 25 percent. At that time, general aviation will account for only 20 percent of all IFR departures, a declining share of the FAA's workload.

The FAA explained the disturbing headline by citing figures for increased general aviation tower contacts. I contrasted our nontowered home base — Frederick (Maryland) Municipal Airport — with a nearby towered facility, Washington County Regional Airport (HGR) in Hagerstown, Maryland, which has five commuter flights a day. Frederick has 130,000 operations a year — and no tower. On the other hand, HGR has fewer than 64,000 total operations — with a tower. So, the statisticians count all GA operations at HGR against their towered-airport numbers. You must know of similar situations where the tower is not provided primarily for our benefit. Once again, the FAA ignored its own report for the commercial airlines, which stated, "The majority of this growth is expected to result from increased commercial aircraft activity."

The one air traffic control service that is provided primarily for our benefit is the flight service station system. Yet, the FAA numbers themselves show a decrease in the use of 800/WX-BRIEF, paired with a heavy increase in DUATS usage. In effect, this is decreasing the FAA's workload.

As the debate continues in Congress over long-term funding for the FAA, your association wants to make absolutely sure that the record is clear. We must emphasize that general aviation is not the major consumer of FAA services and should not be saddled with additional charges beyond what we already pay through the aviation fuel tax. No one left that conference without knowing our position. I doubt that the FAA Office of Aviation Policy and Plans will use that quotation again. And that "insider" publication followed up after the conference with an article quoting AOPA as "making a preemptive strike against user fees."