GA User fees

Jose: You are a reasonable guy. I understand your fictious example.

Here's a real case: Lets pick a GA airport that has 100,000 plus
operations per year. It has a tower with about 7 controllers (contract).
No commercial service. It receives a 95% grant from the FAA for all its
capital improvements, plus it receives the $150K per year FAA operating
subsidy, plus various state funds. There are no landing fees. The vast
majority of the flights are for training or recreation. Tie down fees are
less than $10/night.

Who is paying the tab? The flyers?

Who is benefitting? Not just the flyers. The airport you describe is
probably close to a metropolitan area, which has an even larger airport
nearby, which does have commercial service. That larger airport may
even be more convenient for many GA operations, but the airlines do not
want us mixing up in there. We get in their way. So, instead of having
us land on their concrete (and putting hardly any wear and tear on it at
all), they would prefer we land, well, "elsewhere" and just stay out of
their hair. This is what a reliever airport is. It's a way to keep
spam cans out of the way of big aluminum tubes. The primary beneficary
is the airlines, who can now schedule more flights and have fewer delays
(just imagine what American Airlines would think of a 152 doing pattern
work at JFK).

So, who benefits from this reliever airport? The airlines. And as the
airport gets bigger (think Westchester), the airlines start moving in
there too, demanding concrete and ether that spam cans usually can do
without, but would have to pay for under your plan.

Jose
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