Advocating for "public-use" airports
Pricing, profits, fees, and their impact on America’s aviation ecosystem
The amazing American aviation system was built on a simple but powerful idea: that airports are public-use infrastructure, open and accessible to a wide range of users—from student pilots in single-engine trainers to those conducting medical evacuation, emergency response, agriculture, law enforcement, disaster relief support, and more. This model has helped general aviation flourish in the United States, supporting economic development, pilot training, and connectivity to small towns and cities across our nation.
By Jim Coon
Increasingly, however, the public-use model is being eroded by a shift toward an economic model, particularly through more airport user fees, private equity, and a broader commercialization of airport access. Left unchecked, these trends threaten the long-term viability of general aviation.
Putting profitability over access to a public-use facility has predictable consequences: rising costs including ramp fees, handling charges, infrastructure fees, security fees, building maintenance fees, outrageous hangar rental increases, and fuel costs. In some cases, pilots report paying hundreds of dollars for brief stops at public-use airports that were once considered accessible.
Most airports do a great job balancing user expectations and pricing. Unfortunately, many public-use airports that receive significant federal funds via fees and taxes paid by users increasingly rely on private-sector partners and revenue-maximizing strategies. This often leads to preferential treatment for high-revenue users. Hangar space is reallocated, transient parking becomes restricted or expensive, and smaller aircraft are effectively priced out of certain facilities. Although still technically “public use,” the airport begins to function more like a private terminal for those who can afford it. Can you imagine the National Park Service and its concessionaires limiting access to our national parks, while concessionaires take millions off the parks in profits? Can you imagine being forced to pay to park at a rest stop along our public-use national interstate highway system, again paid for by users through a gas tax?
This evolution is beginning to undermine the foundational purpose of the national “public-use” airport system. Public funding through fuel taxes, federal grants, state programs, and local taxes has long supported airport development and maintenance, with the understanding that these facilities would remain broadly accessible. When access becomes economically exclusionary, it raises serious questions about fairness and public benefit. Our nation’s public-use user-financed system is, in effect, being leveraged by many airports that are generating profits for private companies while limiting the very access it was designed to provide. And we won’t get into the millions in profits going off public-use airports every year.
Defenders of this trend argue that private investment brings efficiency, improved facilities, and professional management. There is some truth to this as many modern FBOs offer high-quality amenities and streamlined services that benefit certain segments of aviation. However, these improvements often cater to high-end users and come at the expense of affordability, which should be considered as economic discrimination in a public-use model. Even the high-end users complain about special event fees, some as high as $25,000.
The needs of a student or private pilot are fundamentally different from those of a corporate jet or for-hire operator, yet the pricing structures at many high-traffic airports reflect only the latter. The long-term consequences of this shift, if left alone, won’t be pretty.
GA has historically served as the grassroots foundation of American aviation, fostering innovation, training pilots, and supporting an array of industries. If access continues to narrow, the ecosystem risks becoming top-heavy, dominated by commercial airlines, charter, and fractional ownership operations. This not only weakens the aviation workforce pipeline but also diminishes the system as a whole. Addressing this issue will require reviewing current FAA policies, strong oversight and enforcement of current rules, and continued advocacy at the federal, state, and local levels. All areas that AOPA’s airports team is working on.
Ultimately, the question is not whether private enterprise has a role in aviation—it does—but whether the balance has shifted too far away from the public interest. If current trends continue, the risk is that GA becomes increasingly exclusive, inaccessible to many who have traditionally sustained it. Preserving the principle that public-use airports exist not just for business opportunities but as shared infrastructure for all users will be key to ensuring a vibrant GA sector in the United States.
Jim Coon spent 25 years on Capitol Hill in several senior staff positions, including staff director for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
