GA growth may be a costly adventure

Hilton Head Island and Lady’s Island airports are currently considering landing fee to GA aircraft to help supplement county funding.

Airport officials are exploring charging landing fees at the two county airports, a revenue stream that could bring in $120,000 a year, according to a presentation officials heard Thursday.
Charging the fees would be a first for the airports and would affect general aviation flights, such as corporate jets or recreational pilots, but not the commercial U.S. Airways Express service, which already pays to land.
The county's Aviation Advisory Board heard a presentation on a proposal to collect the fees from Vector, an Alexandria, Va.-based company that serves as a collection agency for the fees at airports, but no decision came out of the meeting. Fees would affect both the Hilton Head Island and Lady's Island airports and most likely would have to be approved by the County Council, airports director Tom Olson said.

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ATC who should pay?

The head of the Air Transport Association (ATA), which represents U.S. airlines, told a Canadian audience of airline industry executives last Monday that business aircraft should pay as much as airliners to use the National Airspace System. Further, slower aircraft should be segregated to make the system more efficient. Speaking to the Air Transport Association of Canada (ATAC) annual meeting in Montreal, ATA President Jim May said airlines shouldn't be expected to shoulder an unfair burden of the FAA's funding load in the new financial formula that would result from the reauthorization of the Airport and Airways Trust Fund in 2007. May said the predicted explosion of air taxi operations and the continued increase in business flights mean that 25 percent or more of ATC traffic will in the future come from those sectors.

AvWeb Article

The AOPA is currently taking this fight to the FAA. AOPA responded to the FAA inquest after this document (pdf file) was published in the Federal Register. The FAA is concerned that the Airport and Airway Trust Fund is running out of money. AOPA states that since 1982 the government spending level has gone from $2.9 billion to $7.7 billion, and has had stability provided by the unified federal budget process.

AOPA president Phil Boyer stated “"Instead of imposing user fees to fill perceived shortfalls, the FAA should work with the aviation community to find cost savings by eliminating FAA services that are no longer needed and to identify creative ways to fund the capital improvements needed to modernize the air traffic control system."

AOPA link
 
Just a follow-up on the 2006 Transportation Budget.

Congress has passed the FAA funding bill, and in effect said, "The current tax system works just fine, thank you." So much for the FAA's claim that the system is "broken." And once again, lawmakers said, "No user fees!"
"Congress, acting as the board of directors for the FAA, has once again decided that the fairest, most responsible way to pay for aviation's benefits to all citizens is through excise taxes and general fund contributions," said AOPA President Phil Boyer. "And that's why we want to make sure that Congress retains oversight of the FAA."
However, the language on user fees is only good through September 2006. Meanwhile, there are some in Washington who continue to support a funding system with the "revenue stream" tied to services provided. That means that potentially every FAA "service" — a flight service station or DUAT weather briefing, every contact with a tower or en route controller, every new certificate or rating issuance, and conceivably every landing at a federally funded airport — would result in a direct charge to the pilot for that service.

AOPA Article