Flight schools file FAA complaint over Falcon Field fees

CAE Aviation Academy and Thrust Flight, two major flight schools at Falcon Field, filed the complaint—along with a federal lawsuit—after the Mesa City Council unanimously approved a new landing fee structure on March 23 that would dramatically increase operating costs for pilots and flight schools based at the reliever airport, and would have a disproportionate impact on flight training.

Under the resolution, fixed-wing aircraft based at the airport and weighing under 6,000 pounds would be charged $20.35 per landing after receiving 10 free landings each month. Transient aircraft under 6,000 pounds would be charged $24.35 per landing.

The city estimates the fees will generate about $2.6 million per year to address what it calls a budget shortfall. The resolution also contains a mechanism that authorizes fee increases if operations decline by 20 percent or more over three consecutive months—further burdening flight schools that continue to operate at the airport.

CAE projects the fees could cost it more than $3 million annually, while Thrust Flight says the new fees could cost the school more than $500,000 in the first year.

To justify implementing the fees, the complaint alleges the city left out all federal and state funding it receives to maintain and improve the airport from its financial calculations. Those funds account for more than 95 percent of the runway pavement maintenance costs.

The Part 13 complaint asks the FAA to review whether the fee structure complies with grant assurances that the city accepted as a condition of receiving federal Airport Improvement Program funding.

Also in the complaint, Thrust Flight notes that Falcon Field is the school's first location outside of Texas, and that it only opened the facility in 2025 after being encouraged to do so by the city of Mesa. CAE has operated continuously at Falcon Field since 1991.

AOPA has been engaged on the Falcon Field issue since the fee proposal emerged in late 2025. Before the vote, AOPA joined the Arizona Pilots Association and the Aviation Safety Advisory Group of Arizona in two letters to the city council—on March 4 and March 20—raising concerns about the city’s financial methodology and requesting a six-month delay to allow for a transparent review of the airport’s financial needs.

In addition, AOPA submitted written testimony to city and airport officials and raised concerns directly with the FAA. The FAA acknowledged those concerns and indicated that a Part 13 or Part 16 complaint would be the appropriate path forward.

In a letter to the FAA on May 28, AOPA expressed support for the flight schools’ complaint and asked the FAA to issue an immediate stay until the city “conducts a thorough review and proper economic impact analysis that is shared publicly.” The letter also urged the FAA to determine whether noise complaints were “in fact the reason, in whole or in part, for the imposition of landing fees”—pointing to a November 2025 message from the council member who sponsored the fees in which she identified landing fees as a potential noise mitigation strategy.

“These types of statements concern us because it suggests a pattern that we have seen repeated at other airports where the sponsor, facing noise complaints and being unfamiliar with federal grant assurance requirements, decides to impose landing fees to limit aircraft operations and reduce noise complaints,” wrote AOPA General Counsel Fernando Campoamor.

The letter also flagged the city’s plan to use ADS-B data to collect the fees, citing FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford’s comments in a Senate subcommittee hearing that the agency frowns “on the concept of using ADS-B information for revenue collection at airports” and that the FAA would step up efforts to dissuade it if necessary.

AOPA warned that “the FAA’s decision on this matter will certainly have a national impact and will influence how other airport sponsors proceed in the future and whether and how fees are imposed.”

In addition to the Part 13 complaint, the flight schools filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the landing fees from going into effect. The lawsuit contends that:

• Federal aviation law preempts the fees because they were designed to discourage flight operations through economic coercion.
• The fees violate federal law requiring fair and reasonable fees.
• The fees impose an unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce.

The lawsuit also claims the fees violate Arizona state law under a 2018 voter-approved constitutional amendment that prohibits transaction-based fees on services, and that the city council agenda for the March 23 meeting did not meet the state's open meeting law requirements.

The complaint and lawsuit both allege that the fees are an attempt to reduce noise—and point out that the city previously acknowledged it cannot regulate noise.