User Fees on the table again.

Bernoulli Fan said:
"People" don't vote on bills, congressmen do. People barely vote at all. Write your congressman/send him the link to gaservesamerica.com. I'm sure he has enough constituents that depend on GA business flights.
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I'd guess he has a lot more that want the 'rich to pay their share.' Hopefully there is enough GA support to keep GA alive and well forever, but really, we'll find out eventually.
mojo6911 said:
The old slippery slope argument rears its ugly head.
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Doesn't it always? I'd love to be able to trust that something like this won't ever make its way to light GA, but does it really seem that far fetched to charge everyone once you're already charging some people?
 
mojo6911 said:
The old slippery slope argument rears its ugly head.
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"Slippery slope" is only fallacious if there's no causal link--Otherwise, it's a generally logical extension of a concept to its likely conclusion.

In this case, given the history of government and the prevailing sociopolitical ideology in this country, I'd say it's logical extrapolation, not a fallacious non-sequitur.

-Fox
 
All it says is $100 for turbine flights, does that mean it is going to cost FedEx $200 more a day to fly a caravan? I only buy about $360 in gas every day. An extra $200 and I wouldn't be surprised if FedEx looked hard at whether they needed 2 airplanes at my base, which would be bad for me.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
All it says is $100 for turbine flights, does that mean it is going to cost FedEx $200 more a day to fly a caravan? I only buy about $360 in gas every day. An extra $200 and I wouldn't be surprised if FedEx looked hard at whether they needed 2 airplanes at my base, which would be bad for me.
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Or $2,500 for a day of contacting ATC 25 times in a turbine jump plane? Geez.
 
NJA_Capt said:
...And if airlines want to be "fair" and the government wants more money.......stop paying for EAS and stop giving the airlines tax breaks for adding more flights to "certain" cities.

They always fail to mention that the "corporate jets" are paying billions in property taxes
and 5Xs the fuel taxes. GA JET A = $0.22/gallon the airlines pay $.04/gal. Tell me who needs to pay their fair share.

The National Air Transportation Association's website states that GA jet fuel is being taxed at 21.9 cents per gallon, and aviation gasoline, used for piston aircraft, at 19.4 cpg.

According to the ATA's website, all airlines pay .... a fuel tax of 4.3 cents per gallon.
http://www.airportjournals.com/Display.cfm?varID=0609012

Lets all pay our "fair share"........by making the airlines pay the same fuel tax as the rest of us.
Or would you prefer to give corp departments tax breaks for basing in certain cities and operating certain routes? (sarcasm).

GRAND RAPIDS -- Members of the board that govern policy at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport agreed Wednesday to waive landing fees for a year, and offer $250,000 for marketing, to Frontier Airlines.
February 25, 2010 - http://www.mlive.com/business/west-michigan/


Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, Wis., won new American Eagle service by guaranteeing the airline $60,000 worth of marketing assistance while waiving the landing fee for six months.

Metropolitan Knoxville Airport won new service from United Airlines by waiving landing fees for up to nine months for airlines starting new service, along with $70,000 worth of marketing.

Port Columbus Airport in Ohio waived landing fees for one year, plus guaranteed $50,000 in marketing assistance for Delta Air Lines Co.

Kalamazoo/Battle Creek International Airport in Michigan waived landing fees for one year and promised $756,000 in revenue guarantees for Atlantic Southeast Airlines..

Ithaca Regional Airport in New York waived landing fees for one year and supplied $90,000 worth of marketing for Northwest Airlines.

MidAmerica St. Louis Airport in Missouri waived landing fees for a year and provided $220,000 in marketing for Allegiant Air L.L.C.

Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport in Pennsylvania won service to Boston from Continental Airlines by waiving landing fees for a month and promising free advertising.

Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Ky., waived landing fees for a year on five new flights for American Eagle and promised $100,000 for marketing.

Miami International Airport announced it would waive landing fees for 12 months to airlines starting new service.
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2006/02/13/newscolumn3.html?page=all

Who was it again who wasn't paying their fair share?????? :soapbox:
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I agree with what you are saying but I want to point out that as a Regional Pilot who serve CAL, there is no AVP to BOS service, just to EWR, and if you are talking about Knoxville, TN you got the name of the airport wrong so in my mind the rest is discredited from there.

Aside from getting those facts wrong I agree with all you are saying. I also know that as a pilot who flying from EWR to ITH for a particulat CAL regional two years ago when CAL was going to pull out of ITH the city paid over $1 million to CAL execs to keep the service there from EWR
 
vheissu said:
Or $2,500 for a day of contacting ATC 25 times in a turbine jump plane? Geez.
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Thats a good point. IMO, it'll lead to the jump pilot not contacting ATC, per company SOP's, and an increased danger to those around, or jump sites like Paris becoming ghost towns.
 
Why are you guys so emotionally involved about issues that don't affect YOUR bottom line.

Your employers bottom line is not YOUR bottom line. If anybody loses their job because of this, they were going to lose their jobs anyway because their employer couldn't afford their aircraft in the first place. Do you think corporate flight departments shut down when JetA went from $1.00 a gallon to $2.00 a gallon? No, only the ones that were stretched beyond their means already, and they were going to go in the tank in the end anyway.

That people get so worked up about this astounds me. None of you guys own a private jet, and while some of you may operate (or wish to operate) one, this won't affect you. Ever. At all. If you think it does, you're getting worked up about nothing. If you think this is a tax on piston engine GA you're getting worked up about nothing.

Or here, let me sum this post up for you in one sentence; stop stroking out about things you read on the internet and go drink some beer in Vegas in a few weeks.
 
jtrain609 said:
That people get so worked up about this astounds me. None of you guys own a private jet, and while some of you may operate (or wish to operate) one, this won't affect you. Ever. At all. If you think it does, you're getting worked up about nothing. If you think this is a tax on piston engine GA you're getting worked up about nothing.
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First, I do enjoy the irony that political candidates are huge users of GA turbine aircraft. Added tax is essentially taxing their donors (if this ever makes it into legislation, how much do you want to be political candidates would write an exemption in for themselves?)

I've seen what high taxes do to general aviation. Flying in Europe was not at all feasible in Europe when I lived there, the taxes and fees made it a rich man's game. Thankfully gliders aren't viewed as the "fat cat's" toy there.

But what is the purpose of taxing non-scheduled turbine operations? What is the goal? Do we want to reduce 91/135 turbine operations? For the revenue collected to be more than the cost of collecting it, it would need to be a fairly substantial tax. Or is it for political reasons?

For those of us outside of the airline world, it is a pretty big deal. If we derive income from the operation of said jets, taxing them to the point that they are no longer economically viable does not help us. If we own a business that depends upon them, obviously not good either. The CEO of my employer travels in private jets, and for what we pay him - he should. His time costs me a small fortune per hour, several times the cost of the jet per hour. I would prefer his time be spent out doing work for me, the shareholder, and not waiting in an airport for $14,000/hour drinking a martini.
 
If a jet costs $2,000 an hour to operate, and that cost is increased by $100 for a one hour flight, it's a 5% increase in operating costs.

As an example, if your aircraft burned 3,000 pounds per hour, or around 450 gallons per hour. Now double check my math on this one, because I'm pretty horrible at math, but if the price of JetA went up 20 cents from 4 dollars a gallon to $4.20 a gallon, you'd have the same result.

Now that's assuming that all stage lengths are 1 hour. As lengths go up, the price on a percentage goes down.

Again, folks are emotionally involved in this, not financially involved, and the results are somewhere between hilarious and ludicrous. These jets will not go away.
 
jtrain609 said:
If a jet costs $2,000 an hour to operate, and that cost is increased by $100 for a one hour flight, it's a 5% increase in operating costs.
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Or it will be a $50 decrease in crew pay to cover the $100. Believe it or not, there isn't a money fairy out there.

We've got an experimental turbine that will cost $30/hour to operate, that would be more like a 300% increase. Which jets are we counting in this? Ones that require a type rating (this does), ones that weight more than X lbs?

Better plan - why don't we just tax a percentage of the AGI of every pax on every flight? Problem solved!
 
Common sense would dictate anything over 12,500 lbs., meaning anything larger than a King Air 200.

I'd say if you're operating a King Air 350, you can afford a few more dollars because you're correct, there is no money fairy, and it's either coming out of people using the system paying for it, or my taxes continuing to subsidize their usage.
 
jtrain609 said:
Common sense would dictate anything over 12,500 lbs., meaning anything larger than a King Air 200.
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Unfortunately, you and I would be common sense - and Washington is unlikely to ask either of us. I see a 0% chance of this happening- it is a nice talking point - "stick it to the fat cats!," but will never happen. It would cost more than $100 to collect that $100. Raising the tax on Jet A by 2 cents would do the same thing, and cost the govt nothing extra. (not that I think that is a good idea, but at least it would do less harm and cost less to implement)
 
Don't get me wrong, I love to spend a considerable amount of time in conjecture-land, which is probably why I spend time on this forum. But, with that being said, I doubt what you're saying is going to happen.

Why do I doubt it? Because the current statute isn't proposing what you're saying, and as I see things, what you're saying is just as likely with or without this change to the tax code.
 
jtrain609 said:
If a jet costs $2,000 an hour to operate, and that cost is increased by $100 for a one hour flight, it's a 5% increase in operating costs.

As an example, if your aircraft burned 3,000 pounds per hour, or around 450 gallons per hour. Now double check my math on this one, because I'm pretty horrible at math, but if the price of JetA went up 20 cents from 4 dollars a gallon to $4.20 a gallon, you'd have the same result.

Now that's assuming that all stage lengths are 1 hour. As lengths go up, the price on a percentage goes down.

Again, folks are emotionally involved in this, not financially involved, and the results are somewhere between hilarious and ludicrous. These jets will not go away.
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A caravan doesn't cost nearly that much to operate per hour. Including paying the pilot you'd be looking at maybe 20% or more of the costs being taxes when you consider most caravan flights average 0.8-1.0 block.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
A caravan doesn't cost nearly that much to operate per hour. Including paying the pilot you'd be looking at maybe 20% or more of the costs being taxes when you consider most caravan flights average 0.8-1.0 block.
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That's fantastic, but I doubt you guys will get hit with this. You'd better believe that FedEx has the lobbying power to make sure that doesn't happen.
 
I don't think it will happen at all. Obama doesn't have the horsepower to do anything. He waffled way too much the past 3 years.
 
SpiraMirabilis said:
I don't think it will happen at all. Obama doesn't have the horsepower to do anything. He waffled way too much the past 3 years.
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That may be the more relevant discussion, to be honest.

But hey, this is the internet, so let's not have discussions about reality :)
 
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