Corporate America is flying on the taxpayer's dime.
As far back in time as April, 2007, the Bush Administration(!) proposed user fees to end the scandalous state of unearned entitlement enjoyed by corporate jets flying in controlled airspace. At that time, the FAA, with a Bush appointee at the helm, released "Fact Sheet – Impact of the Administration Financing Proposal on General Aviation." (Abbreviated to “GA”)
Here are a few inconvenient facts from that document:
“The allocation found that GA drives approximately 16 percent of the costs of air traffic services. Nearly 10 percent is related to high performance GA aircraft such as corporate jets, while 6 percent is related to piston GA aircraft.”
“In contrast, GA currently contributes just over 3 percent of the taxes that flow into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund.”
“The bottom line is that under the current system, the family of four taking a budget vacation (i.e., traveling by commercial air flight) is subsidizing the CEOs flying on a corporate jet.”
So, even an administration as otherwise useless as that of George W. Bush had sufficient integrity to recapture millions in unnecessay giveaways. Granted that amounted to a fraction of a percent in the federal budget, but such an observation is no defense of unearned entitlement. The fact sheet continues with:
“Our proposal addresses this inequity in a way that will allow GA to continue to thrive, while coming much closer to covering the costs they drive in the aviation system.” (Read: We wanna make the fat cats start paying their fair share.)
...piston users are considered marginal and therefore are not assigned the fixed costs of the system.” (This refers to private pilots who fly piston-engined private planes. Many aviation lobbying organizations have implied, using lies of omission, that private pilots flying their piston-engined airframes from nontowered airports, would be subject to this user fee. That is one whopping lie. This misinformation campaign, spearheaded by AOPA, NBAA, GAMA and by Kansas Senator Pat Roberts, has actually succeeded in getting private pilots to lobby against their own best interests.)
“The Administration’s proposal does not include any user fees for GA to fly through Class B or any other type of airspace. User fees would only apply to GA when landing at or taking off from one of the 30 large hub airports. These are the busiest, most congested airports in the system. They are in major metropolitan areas with other airports at which GA would not be subject to user fees. The fee would be based in part on the weight of the aircraft. As a result, FAA estimates that the typical piston aircraft would pay a fee between $4 and $10 to land at a large hub airport — less than the cost to park a car for a day at one of these airports. And the fee would be completely avoidable if the airplane chooses to fly to another nearby airport.”
Corporate jets flying in controlled airspace are not paying their fair share of the costs for the flight routing services they incur. They haven' for decades. This is just one of their many unearned, undeserved, unjust entitlements. It's corporate welfare, a form that flies under the radar, or in stealth mode.
As the Clinton, Bush and now the Obama Administrations have noted, there is no good reason for this entitlement to exist. All three administrations moved to eliminate it. A solution, and a modest one at that, has been to prorpose a $100.00 user fee on corporate jet flights in controlled airspace.
The fat cats, predictably, screamed like Chicken Little, declaring the fee, which corporations would brush off like it were dandruff, would cripple corporate aviation. Given the investment in a corporate jet, to include maintenance, storage and upkeep, salaries for the pilots, etc., a user fee is paltry, almost mere symbolism.
In a slightly novel tack, corporate apologists claimed that unionized workers in the aviation manufacturing sector would be laid off and downsized if such a draconian fee were enacted. Yawn. Next whopper please.
Smell a bit of sulpher after that whopper? Had anyone been watching, the lips on Machiavelli's dessicated corpse would have curled up slightly at the corners.
Fat cats have also claimed that collecting user fees will require an expanded new bureaucracy that will actually, itself, end up absorbing most of the fees collected, to pay the administrative costs. Clever parry, but groundless. Another excerpt from the Fact Sheet dispels this notion:
“Myth: Administering the new user fee system will require a large new bureaucracy and billions of dollars in costs.
Facts: FAA is confident that we can collect fees at minimal administrative cost to the FAA and the users of the system. The FAA has a good track record in this area; the administrative billing and collection processes for overflight fees have gone extremely smoothly.
Based on best practices from the U.S. and around the world, the administrative cost would be significantly less than 1 percent of the anticipated revenue. GA pilots will see no air traffic user fee bills if they do not use the 30 large hub airports.”
Aviation lovers, order your congressmen to either institute a user fee on corporate jet flights in controlled airspace, or raise the fuel tax on the jet fuel pumped into the fuel tanks of those corporate jets.
Let the corporate execs scream, whine, stomp their feet and hold their breath. Let the trust fund babies cry as their entitlements shrivel away. These are merely the temper tantrums of the indulged. Time for them to grow up and conduct themselves as responsible citizens.