ATC User Fees

"Marty Shapiro" wrote in message
...
Lets take a look at data from AirNav for 2 high fee and 2 zero fee
class B airport: [snipped]

The data you posted simply supports my point. Even at the no-fee airports,
there aren't that many airplanes (especially considering the size of the
airport). 100 planes just isn't that many. There are plenty of reasons to
stay away from large Class B airports other than landing fees.

But regardless, looking at based aircraft isn't relevant. What you want is
operations. And the data you show don't actually suggest an "effective
ban". At one "high fee" airport, GA makes up 5% of the traffic, with the
"no fee" airports showing only between 11% and 24%. That's hardly a slam
dunk for the point you're trying to make.

If the airport is public use, it can not legally ban light GA
aircraft. All it can do is highly discourage them from landing.

Yes.

One
method of discouraging light GA aircraft from landing is to impose a high
fee.

Yes.

However, if they make the fee prohibitive enough to achieve a
complete ban (which is probably impossible as there is always some one
with
deep enough pockets who could pay it) they would then run afoul of the
FAA.
One airport authority tried this at their class B and got slammed down by
the FAA.

Airports have had trouble imposing unreasonable fees, yes. But one would
think that the FAA would consider a fee high enough to "ban light GA for all
practical purposes" to be unreasonable. After all, that's the point of
their objection. If anything, that state of affairs suggests that no
airports "effectively ban" light GA.

If you want a definition, I'll give you one. If there are viable
reliever airport(s) at a location with a class B airport, a fee which
effectively bans light GA aircraft at the class B is one where 98% of the
transient light GA aircraft operations at that location take place at the
reliever airport(s).

That definition has no logical validity, since it ignores reasons for using
the reliever airport unrelated to the landing fee.

See the above data from AirNav contrasting high fee class B with no
fee class B.

I did. It doesn't support what you're saying.

Pete