George Patterson wrote:
.Blueskies. wrote:
It more closely indicates the numbers of users of 'the system' or more closely indicates the benefit received.
Absolutely no way a J-3 should pay anything near what a 747 pays, not even 1/1000th the amount...

Well, the current system already does that pretty well and the cost of
collection is a lot less than any other method anyone has managed to think of.
Maybe we ought to stick with it?


IIRC there are about $740m in taxes collected on aviation fuels
annually, of which $60m are 100LL. I think it's arguable whether that
actually covers the cost of services we consume, but we're certainly
not subsidizing other parts of the system.

As for collections, it's arguable whether a fuel tax is more
"efficient" to collect than a user fee. Fuel taxes have to be collected
from many thousands of fuel sellers. A usage fee could be computed
based on flight plans, and there are what, 5 primary computers that
process those? We have tail numbers and addresses already so sending
the bill doesn't require that much. It's so simple even Lockmar could
figure out how to do it.

The Cub-vs-747 debate is missing another detail which is traffic
management. An enroute airspace block at FL350 is worth a lot more than
one at 7000'. Piston GA also tends to use reliever and tertiary fields
with comparatively low traffic loads. So there is a sense in which the
747 places a higher burden on the system. However, much of this
argument disappears when we consider the VLJs like the Eclipse. They're
the ones that really need to worry about a cost-based accounting. That
alone could kill the personal air-taxi system, perhaps rightly so.

-cwk.