Here's the latest on GA user fees (from AOPA) -- yes -- I know that
Skyloon" will howl and bark at the moon about this one:



"USER FEES COULD HURT THOSE WHO WANT THEM THE MOST
Many of the nation's biggest airlines are the strongest advocates for
user fees. But a new white paper, "Turbulence ahead: How user fees
could ground the FAA," prepared by aviation industry expert Darryl
Jenkins,
shows that user fees could hurt both consumers and the airlines."
Jenkins' research adds to the evidence that AOPA has been presenting
against user fees," said AOPA President Phil Boyer. "A user-fee funded
aviation system is bad public policy, strongly opposed by general
aviation pilots and, ironically, potentially harmful to the very people
that it is supposed to benefit." Jenkins reiterated AOPA's position that
the current FAA funding system works just fine. "There is no evidence
to justify radical changes in the aviation tax and fee system," Jenkins
wrote in the white paper prepared for the National Air Traffic
Controllers
Association. "Every available industry indicator relating to the FAA--
including passenger volume and yield--is on the rise." (Boyer said the
same thing before Congress last May.) Jenkins says user fees would be
"financial disaster" for U.S. airlines, because when revenue from user
fees decreases for any reason (typically, a soft economy), airlines and
other stakeholders would have to make up the shortfall. "Airlines in
financial difficulty could avoid paying millions of dollars in user fees
by filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The resulting shortfall
would have to be made up by other users," Jenkins said. "Do we really
want air traffic control or other FAA services subject to the same
economic vagaries that have ravaged the airlines?" See AOPA Online
( http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsite...51222user.html )."

--
Remve "_" from email to reply to me personally.