I hope your summer was spent, at least in part, enjoying clear skies, beautiful flying weather, and the camaraderie of your local airport and FBO. I hope you made progress toward your flying goals, whether you’re working on earning your very first certificate or searching for the perfect airplane for those family outings.
No doubt your summer was also affected by the bitter debate over the budget deficit and debt ceiling, and the wild swings in the stock market that had global investors running for cover. While the debt crisis was averted and the markets calmed, these issues will continue to affect us this fall—and they could directly affect your flying.
If you’re relatively new to aviation, you may be unfamiliar with the idea of user fees—fees charged directly to pilots and aircraft operators for anything from weather reports to filing flight plans, from talking to air traffic controllers to landing. These fees abound in Europe and many other places, so they’re not a new idea. But they are a bad idea.
Experience has shown us that user fees are expensive to collect, making them an inefficient way of paying for critical services such as air traffic control or weather reporting. They also have a nasty way of spreading and growing. What starts out as a landing fee for jets soon becomes a flight plan filing fee for everyone. They also can have a negative impact on safety. Why? Well, how many touch and goes are you going to do if you have to pay $20 every time your wheels meet the runway? For most, the answer is the minimum legal number and that’s just not as good as as many as I need to be safe and proficient in all kinds of weather and surface conditions.
The reason I bring this up, especially after this summer’s debt battle, is that the idea of imposing user fees on GA came up during the course of those negotiations. And you can bet the idea will be back this fall as the “Super Committee” hashes out a longer term budget deal—one that is sure to include some type of “revenue reform.” The committee has until Thanksgiving to come up with a plan, which will be considered on an up or down vote. If they can’t reach an agreement or their proposal doesn’t pass Congress, spending cuts will take effect automatically.
Here’s the thing: Without many of our friends in Congress serving on the committee and without the usual hearings, we won’t have many opportunities to weigh in against user fees. I think it would be naïve to imagine that we won’t be asked to pay a little more—us and just about everybody else, too. So the real fight may come down to how we make that contribution to our national air transportation system. Historically, we’ve paid at the pump through an excise tax on aviation fuel. The system is in place, and it’s efficient. If we have to pay more, that’s how we want to do it.
We need to make sure that our lawmakers know GA is valuable—not just to us but to the entire nation. Yes, we fly because we love it. We fly for fun. But we also fly for business, charity, firefighting, humanitarian relief, search and rescue, and many, many other reasons. Our flying creates jobs, brings resources to otherwise isolated communities, and generates billions in economic activity. Our story is a good one, and it’s one we need to tell if we’re going to stop user fees from becoming a reality.
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