Trouble ahead over small plane fees

From the Cushing (OK) Daily Citizen:

Trouble ahead over small plane fees
By Randall Turk
THE NORMAN TRANSCRIPT (NORMAN, Okla.)

NORMAN, Okla. - A political dogfight is looming over Washington, D.C.
skies this summer as a financially troubled airline industry attempts
to shift some of its financial burden to smaller aircraft.

Essentially, the National Air Transportation Association representing
the airlines is seeking about $2 billion a year in federal tax relief.
To accomplish that, NATA wants general aviation - all aircraft except
commercial airliners and military - to take up the slack. That would
reduce the 7.5 percent "user fees" airline passengers pay.

To compensate for that, an unprecedented user fee would be slapped on
general aviation. Such fees would be in lieu of a 21.9-cent per gallon
federal excise tax on jet fuel and the 19.4-cent federal tax on
aviation gas presently paid at the pump when general aviation planes
refuel. Federal taxes on aviation go into the Federal Aviation
Administration Trust Fund that subsidizes air traffic control and other
improvements at major airports.

Private aviation's case for maintaining the status quo was voiced
recently, when an executive from the National Business Aviation
Association visited Norman. NBAA Operations Director Jay Evans spoke to
University of Oklahoma aviation students about careers in business
aviation.

Earlier, Evans said the user tax proposal for general aviation "comes
up in Congress every year," but appears more ominous this year, in
light of FAA warnings of an impending shortage of operating funds.

"Our concern is that the FAA hasn't put the kibosh on it," he
said. "The Administration and the FAA are looking at this and
everything else on the table."

The NBAA defines business aircraft as planes used for conducting
business. An exception is air cargo planes such as those operated by
UPS and FedEx, which are classified as commercial air carriers.

Business aircraft, considered a segment of the general aviation
industry, can be anything from corporate jets to single-engine,
piston-powered planes. In 2003, the NBAA says, more than 10,000
companies operated nearly 16,000 aircraft for business purposes.

The official NBAA view is that user fees could not be fair nor easily
levied on business aircraft.

"It would mean taking a large part of the financial burden of air
traffic operations and putting it on general aviation," Evans said.
"Right now, we pay our share through the fuel tax. If a business
aircraft's engine turns, that's paying for use of the system."

The general aviation industry already contributes about 20 percent of
taxes going into the FAA Trust Fund, more than compensating for its
limited use of the country's 558 commercial airports. NBAA statistics
indicate 70 percent of all commercial flight take-off and landing
operations occur at 30 hub airports throughout the country. Only 3 to 7
percent of such operations involve general aviation craft, the NBAA
maintains.

The Air Transport Association's position: Any aircraft in the air
traffic control system should pay the user fees. The airline
association holds that a blip on the radar screen is a blip, no matter
what size the craft. The NBAA says that is not the issue.

A 747 airliner, for instance, "requires a tremendous amount of work
to get off the ground," Evans said. "It has much more of a
weight-bearing effect on airports. That's where the biggest part of
the [airport] expense is."

NBAA President Ed Bolen is scheduled to testify before Congress in
early May to present business aviation's case against user fees. In
official statements, Bolen has viewed user fees for general aviation as
"costly, requiring a large bureaucracy to administer."

Such fees on small aircraft are also unfair, since most utilize the
approximately 5,000 public use airports throughout the country instead
of the major airports that require the most capital expenditure, the
NBAA says.

Flight statistics indicate air carriers account for more than half the
instrument flight rules operations (or take-offs and landings during
poor flight conditions) at major airports. Commuter planes and air
taxis constitute 21 percent of the instrument flights at the larger
airports, and about 9 percent are military flights.

Burdening general aviation with usage fees could affect safety and even
what consumers pay for goods and services, Evans said. "If there's
concern about user fees, some general aviation aircraft may avoid
flying through air traffic control areas [outside radar control]."

Another concern is that user fees would translate into business/general
aviation aircraft flying less. "To squelch general aviation would
affect a growth industry," Evans said. "It would affect consumers
indirectly."

Evans said the FAA has not delineated what costs are involved with a
shift in user fees. But Evans said the NBAA and the other aviation
associations agree that modernizing the country's air traffic control
system is a priority.

"The government has not budgeted as much as we would like for
improvements to air traffic control," Evans said. But assessing user
fees on general aviation is not the answer, he said: "A new
bureaucracy that requires would severely impact the Aviation Trust
Fund."

Randall Turk writes for The Norman (Okla.) Transcript.