AOPA President Phil Boyer is general aviation's spokesman in Washington.
Earlier in the year this column discussed the pressure from the Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, and airlines to change the way our federal air traffic control (ATC) system is financed (" President's Position: FAA Funding," June Pilot). The airline association actually stated that it believes that $3 billion annually should shift to other system users; in other words, general aviation. Their way to shift the financial burden is to implement user fees for operations in the ATC system. Easy for the airlines to accept this method since, as I recently pointed out to Congress, it is the airline passengers who would pay the fees. However, GA pilots and owners pay an efficiently collected fuel tax that comes from our own pockets. Now the leadership of the FAA is turning up the heat by claiming that the Airport and Airway Trust Fund — used to support much of FAA expenses — is running out of money.
The existing excise tax structure and associated FAA funding expire at the end of September 2007. Not surprisingly, one of the major sources for the aviation trust fund are the taxes on airline passengers, set at rates based on the price of tickets. In the economic and post-9/11 downturn in airline travel, the balance in the trust fund did sink. However, despite what the FAA has said, the president's own Office of Management and Budget has projected that the trust fund revenues will increase by more than 50 percent from today's $9.2 billion to $14.1 billion by 2010. These projections may in fact be low, as the airlines continue to increase airfares. The FAA is citing the need for a consistent, stable revenue stream, as though the existing system of excise taxes and the congressional budget process has not provided such a system. Since 1982, the FAA's operations spending level has grown from $2.9 billion to $7.7 billion this year. AOPA believes that the words "stable revenue stream" are nothing more than shorthand for ATC user fees. User fees also accomplish another airline and air traffic goal: to remove the Congress as the board of directors of the FAA. "Users pays, users says" is a principle that the FAA has tossed out when AOPA has challenged this principle. But what no one can tell me is how GA would fare in such a system. AOPA maintains that our elected officials must be involved in the decision making relative to this country's vital air transportation system. And, if not Congress, will the airlines become the majority members of a privatized ATC system board?
Just recently, the FAA sent AOPA and other system users a comprehensive package of policy questions, spreadsheets on ATC costs by type of operation and aircraft, and a section on foreign countries that have migrated to user fees and privatized air traffic systems. The administrator's letter to me stated, "One major component of this work is an ongoing study that would allocate FAA's air traffic control costs to the users of the system." AOPA was given a mere 30 days to respond to a host of questions that the FAA has been working on for the past year. The questions were heavily slanted toward how a user-fee-funded ATC system would function and the underlying sentiment that this should be outside of current congressional oversight. An example was the first question, "Are there specific ATC services or programs that you believe users should pay for directly? If so, which ones and why?"
The FAA questions also ask about pilots paying for the FAA staff that reviews medical applications and oversees the aviation medical examiner's program. It asks questions about off-loading the costs of other FAA departments that handle pilot and aircraft registration, aircraft certification, and fees for designees that provide important services to pilots and aircraft owners. In a newly introduced topic, the FAA has a question about actually releasing airports from the important guarantees that accompany federal funding so federally funded airports will remain open and be available to all users.
The only positive in this list are three questions about how much of the FAA should be paid for from general taxpayer revenues (from those taxpayers who may never fly an airliner, or participate in GA). AOPA strongly believes that the nation receives a tremendous benefit from a viable air transportation system. In testimony earlier this year before the House aviation subcommittee I strongly advocated for a 25-percent general fund contribution.
This is not some benign project because the accompanying spreadsheets of numbers suggest GA is a major user of the IFR system. Excuse me, but wasn't and isn't this system designed for the airlines, and GA is a very incremental user? Also, many VFR contacts with ATC are the result of class B or C airspace, control zones around towered airports, security-related airspace, and the like. Many times we as pilots would prefer not to have to make the contacts required to accommodate these regulations, put in place for the airlines or security.
Frankly, if controlling air traffic on behalf of aviation safety and efficiency is not a government function, then what is?
We'll have answers to all the FAA questions — not necessarily answers the FAA or the airlines want to read — and AOPA will continue the countdown to September 2007's funding bill deadline. This is not the last you'll read on this subject, and AOPA is committed to staying the course on this core policy issue.
