From The Editor

User Fees: Be heard! Here’s how.

By Jeff Berlin

Last summer, I flew a factory-fresh TBM 850 from the Socata factory in Tarbes, France, to White Plains Airport just north of New York City. That flight had me and Christian Briand, Socata’s chief pilot, hopscotching across the North Atlantic from our departure point in southwest France to New York with intermediate stops in Wick, Scotland; Reykjavik, Iceland; Sondre Stromfjord, Greenland; Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada; and Bangor, Maine. It was quite a flight—and after attending a forum on user fees last week at the Aircraft Electronics Association show in Reno, Nev., I reflected again on that transatlantic flight, but instead of reminiscing about how beautiful the luminescent turquoise icebergs were as we sailed into Greenland, or how supremely otherworldly the craggy and densely colored mountains of Iceland appeared as we descended toward Reykjavik, I thought about how much it must have cost for the rather involved ATC services we required to make such a flight. The image I get is like this—I’m sitting in a yellow cab in stop-and-go New York City traffic. We’re not moving, and I’m watching the meter click higher and higher. I’m running late, and the money’s flying out of my pocket.

An ex of mine used to say, when something wasn’t quite right, “You know, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies…” Well, right now, when I think about the reality of user fees looming like a dense marine layer rolling over a sunny, coastal airport, and the stifling effect it’ll have on much recreational and business flying, it’s surely not the puppies and ice cream (tailwinds and low fuel flows?) that the legacy airlines and FAA would like us to believe.

The reality, according to the alphabet groups that advocate for general aviation, is that user fees, also known as the Next Generation Air Transportation System Financing Reform Act of 2007, is a tax shift onto general aviation and not the modernization bill that they’re portraying it as.

Word is, according to NBAA and GAMA, that if this plan is ratified, FAA funding will be cut by $600 million in 2008. This FAA plan diverts money that could be invested in ATC modernization and runway and control-tower construction, and shifts it into fee assessment and collection—it funnels money that can actually improve infrastructure over to bureaucracy. This bill authorizes the FAA to go up to $5 billion in debt starting in 2013, and nowhere does this FAA proposal detail the technologies, timelines or costs of the next phase of modernization.

On that TBM flight, Christian and I spoke to weather briefers and filed IFR flight plans. We flew thousands of miles along airways under positive ATC control, and shot approaches to runways in Wick, Reykjavik and Sondre Stromfjord. And as we approached the New York area, I cancelled IFR and requested with center the Hudson corridor and then the La Guardia Transition at 1,500 feet. It’s one of my favorite ways to see the city. Bumping down and up the Hudson River corridor, we trundled by the Empire State Building and Ground Zero, and then cut east across Central Park and flew over the city, over La Guardia, and then, once past the Throgs Neck Bridge, we turned north toward White Plains.

Remember that meter visual I drew a bit earlier? Well, I can only imagine the disincentive many pilots will feel each time they might have the inclination to key the mic and make a request with ATC like the one I did for the above routing. If, like in Europe, a briefing costs X, a departure from an airport costs Y and VFR flight-following or ATC services for an IFR flight costs Z, will pilots opt to watch the Weather Channel, hold their fingers to the wind, look around, call that a briefing, and then say, “Yep, we’re good to go”? To save the few bucks that will be incurred under this plan, some undoubtedly will. Will some pilots opt to try to scud run below an overcast to save the ATC service cost of an instrument approach? I bet some will.

And then there’s the proposed increase in the tax on avgas; from about 20 cents a gallon to 70 cents. I shudder to think what this will mean to those who operate light-piston twins. And no matter what airplane one flies, that $100 hamburger at your local greasy spoon will inflate to a price commensurate with that of the Kobe burger with caviar and truffles at the 21 Club—we’ll be flying across the county for the hundreds-of-dollars hamburger. Or more likely, we’ll be flying much less, like in Australia, which has seen a 28% decline in general aviation activity in the past 20 years since their “user pays” system was put in place. I’d hate to see this happen here.

We live in a representative republic—exercise your right to be heard. Call or write your congressman and senators. Let them know this plan isn’t a good one, and if they want your vote, they’ll vote against this bill.