Tom Coble Opposes Additional Taxes And User Fees On Aircraft Use

The CEO of Coble Trench Safety, which is headquartered in Greensboro, NC and has branch offices throughout the south and east, writes in the Charlotte Observer that the President and some in Congress should lay off their "vilification" of general aviation to score political points.

King Air B-200 File Photo

Tom Coble, who flies his personal Beech King Air B-200 to visit his 11 branches in six states, writes what most involved in aviation already know: Business airplanes allow company executives to be far more efficient, support American manufacturing, generate $150 billion in economic impact and support 1.2 million jobs. Those jobs range from the union laborers who assemble the aircraft to the small businessman who distributes parts and spares to the mechanic who keeps them flying and the line worker who pumps the gas and mows the airport grass.

In his opinion piece. Coble points out that GA "takes a beating from senseless and ongoing vilification," and that has caused a second dip in deliveries of airplanes. He equates the rhetoric in Washington to "demagoguery of general aviation" as the President and some members of congress propose changes in depreciation schedules and new "user fees," while portraying the businessmen who use the airplanes as a business tool as "millionaires and billionaires."

Coble says that, if we are to look to businesses to again expand and hire back workers, it doesn't make sense to "vilify the very tools they count on to increase their productivity." He says stimulating the economy does not mean taxing those businesses "to death" and "penalizing the tools that are needed to remain competitive."

FMI