Obama administration proposes $100 air traffic fee

On September 23, 2011, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) member Kevin Mossey of Marion, Iowa started a petition urging the Obama administration to nix a proposed $100-per-flight fee for use of all air traffic services in “controlled airspace.”  The plan to enforce the general aviation (GA) fee was made known in a White House deficit-reduction proposal released in September 2011.

In his petition, which received 8,904 signatures, Mossey explained that the existing revenue generation, collected through excise taxes, allows more of the revenue to go towards the operation of the air traffic control (ATC) system than the proposed fee, and that present fuel taxes are a more accurate reflection of the use of ATC services.

On January 13, 2012, the Office of Management and Budget Associate Director Dana Hyde re-affirmed the administration’s commitment to the $100-per-flight fee, saying that the fee would both “ensure that everyone is paying their fair share” and help reduce the nation’s deficit.  Hyde also stated that the fee will ensure that all who use the airspace system share the costs fairly.  “For example, under current law, a large commercial aircraft flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco pays between twenty-one and thirty-three times the fuel taxes paid by a corporate jet flying the same route and using the same FAA air traffic services.”

According to AOPA, non-commercial jet fuel tax is 21.9-cents-per-gallon, whereas the commercial jet fuel tax is only 4.4 cents per gallon.  As it stands, general aviation already pays more in jet-fuel taxes than its commercial counterparts.

General aviation has supported the National Airspace System for years through the use of excise taxes.  AOPA maintains that general aviation should continue to pay its fair share into the system, but not based on miscalculations.