Divvying Up the Skies – The Bush Plan for User Fees

President Bush has released his proposal for a federal budget, and contained within it is one of the greatest threats to general aviation freedom and safety that the government could impose. No, I’m not talking about the Temporary Flight Restrictions that accomplish little but penalize general aviation for the government’s failure to maintain airline security; I’m talking about the threat of user fees becoming the basic economic engine behind our air traffic control system infrastructure. Make no mistake about it. Our freedoms and our safety as pilots are coming under attack.

In case anyone has any illusions, the air traffic system exists for the convenience and the safety of the airline industry and not for or because of general aviation. General aviation benefits from it, of course, as it should, since aviation fuel taxes have largely been and continue to be the driving funding mechanism behind the system. This administration has engaged in the same type of disinformation campaign in talking about FAA and ATC funding for the past few years that it has used to justify the war in Iraq. The airlines would like to see this system instituted because they always have been and always will be in favor of anything that shifts their costs of operation to anyone else and eliminates or reduces general aviation operations from any area they operate in.

There will be economic impacts to many aviation ground-based businesses, mainly those in Class B or C areas. If I owned an avionics or aircraft repair business located within either one of those areas, especially if the large majority of the business is dependent on general aviation aircraft, I’d be on the horn to my Congressman or Senator right now. You’re going to lose business, my friend, as general aviation pilots look to those shops at uncontrolled airfields to get their maintenance.

That aside, I’m going to argue against a user fee based system from a safety standpoint.

The ATC system works as well as it does today because all pilots work together with ATC to make it so. If I have to pay a fee to talk to Houston Approach anytime I fly in this area, you can bet I won’t be calling them anytime soon. Secondly, when my wife and I fly to Missouri, both of out main stops are at Class C airfields. If user fees come into play as the President wants, you can bet that will change. We will find small general aviation airfields at about the same range that will fit the bill, and that will mean our fuel and food purchases will go elsewhere. But I said I was going to make a safety argument instead of an economic one, so here goes.

If user fees are implemented, VFR aircraft that currently volunteer to talk to air traffic control will not. Go ask any controller in a heavily used terminal area if he would rather be talking or not to every pilot within the confines of his responsibilities, and see what kind of response you get. In marginal VFR conditions, pilots who would file IFR today for safety purposes will give doing so a second thought or avoid it altogether, especially on longer trips when user fees from multiple air traffic control facilities will compound trip expenses to make them prohibitive. While it may seem silly to say so, I’m willing to bet that even pilots who find themselves in situations where contact with ATC might turn a life threatening situation into a survivable one may wait too long to call because they know a user fee awaits, and they’re going to avoid that until they’re convinced their lives, their passenger’s lives, or their aircraft’s survival may be at stake. In many cases, that realization will come too late.

Over the long term, the bigger threat is that the imposition of user fees is the first step in the privatization of the air traffic control mechanism. The problem with this is graphically illustrated in the plight of a pilot who contacted a Lockheed run Flight Service Station for a weather and TFR brief and was told there were no TFR’s along his route of flight. The FSS briefer was wrong, and the pilot was intercepted and is now fighting a FAA violation. To do so, he requested a copy of the briefing tapes associated with the incident under the Freedom of Information Act and was denied access to the tape because the FOIA does not apply to Federal contractors. We can expect more of this type of sidestepping of the law (in this case, the intent of it) as more and more ATC functions are turned over to private control. Essentially, this pilot has lost part of his rights to a fair hearing, no matter how much anyone in the government wants to argue he has not. (Be careful of the bureaucratic trick that sidesteps the issue of abuse of power or loss of privacy by arguing “privilege” versus “rights”. A right is a freedom that exists without the government; a privilege is a right under governmental control.)

If you want to understand the impact of user fees on the air traffic system, take a look at that of Europe’s where the costs of flying are all but prohibitive. That kind of situation can easily happen here, and there are political and economic forces at work to push it that way. The only way it won’t happen is if American pilots exercise their Constitutional rights and protest this kind of treatment.

We’ll accept user fees in the air when every single road in America demands a toll.