NBAA Hosts Panel Discussion

GA leaders made a call to action at this year's NBAA convention. NBAA's Ed Bolen hosted the EAA's Tom Poberezny, GAMA's Pete Bunce, NATA's Jim Coyne and AOPA's Andy Cebula in an open forum discussing possible FAA user fees.

"The simple fact is the airlines want to pay less and control more," Bolen said in his opening remarks. "They want to shift $2 billion in taxes onto general aviation and remove Congress from control of the system."

The issue of user fees for aviation came up because a multi-year package for Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funding and modernization programs will go before congress next year. The Air Transport Association, which represents US airlines, is looking to this reauthorization process as an opportunity to shift from the traditional way the FAA has been funded to one based on user fees.

Bolen said GA wants to expand and modernize the air transportation system, but notes upgrades to satellite systems will likely cost around 300-million dollars annually.

He added in 1997, the last time Congress took up reauthorization of the FAA, the airlines engaged in "internecine warfare" with the large, legacy carriers taking on the newer, low-cost airlines over the changes they wanted to make to the national aviation system.

"This time, it's circle the wagons at the airlines and come after general aviation," he said.

The panel detailed the general aviation community's unified opposition to user fees on the grounds that such a system would create a new bureaucracy, raise "hidden taxes" in the form of added administrative processing costs for GA users, and place the U.S. system - the largest, safest, most efficient in the world - on the level of other international user-fee-based systems that are "second, at best, to ours," as Bolen put it. "No market-leading business would ever emulate a model that is in second or third place."

Panel members noted GA already pays its fair share of fees in the form of a fuel tax.

Panel members urged all GA users to contact their elected representatives this election year. Congress, they say, is making the decision, and they need to know how YOU feel about user fees.

FMI: www.nbaa.org