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FAA Reauthorization Bill Status

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I don't want age 65 now OR later...but if it comes down to user fees for GA or immediate age 65, I say let's get the age discrimination lawsuits over with.

NO USER FEES.
 
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Legislation that would fund a long-awaited upgrade of the U.S. air-traffic control system easily passed the House Thursday, though key parts of the bill looked doomed after the White House said the bill's tax structure would trigger a veto.


The House of Representatives voted to authorize funding for the Federal Aviation Administration through 2011. The 267-151 vote was mostly on party lines.
The bill would provide $68 billion for the agency that oversees U.S. airspace and regulates U.S airlines, bankrolling its operating budget and underwriting a major upgrade to the nation's air traffic control system to one based on satellite-positioning. The current system uses 1950s-era radar technology.
The increased spending would be partly financed by higher fuel taxes on airlines, increasing the tax rate on aviation gasoline by 25%, to 24.2 cents a gallon, and by 64% for aviation-grade kerosene used in noncommercial aviation, to 36 cents.
Consumers would also share some of the pain, and get some additional looking-after when things go wrong.
The bill, H.R. 2881, would raise the fee that airports can charge passengers to a maximum of $7 a ticket from a $4.50, an increase that would go to expanding or improving airports, such as projects to reduce noise congestion.
And it would require airlines and airports to have contingency plans in place to take care of passengers stuck in planes waiting at an airport for several hours. Those excessive tarmac delays are part of a passenger's bill of rights pushed by some legislators and consumer activists. See related story.
The bill also included a slew of smaller proposed changes to the way airlines operate in the United States, such as raising the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots to 65 from 60.
The White House has threatened to veto FAA reauthorization if final legislation, which is also making its way through the Senate, contains the same structure for levying fees on airlines.
On the eve of the House vote, the White House said H.R. 2881 "falls far short" of providing reforms proposed by the Bush administration earlier in the year, including linking fees to fund the FAA with usage.
Making the tax rate on aircraft operators line up with their use of the system has been a subject of intense lobbying by commercial airlines, which say they are paying more then their fair share for the FAA's operations.
Instead, the Air Transport Association wants Congress to raise the tax rate on corporate jets. The association includes , such major carriers as AMR, CAL, UAL.
The association has launched an advertising campaign targeted at wealthy owners of corporate jets, featuring a bee-hived flyer named Edna, who "likes wearing big-wigs ... not subsidizing them."
"The House bill does little to promote NextGen or correct the subsidy of corporate jets by airline passengers," said James May, the group's president and CEO, in a statement late Thursday. "Even worse, it imposes a $2.2 billion tax increase on passengers in the form of airport facilities charges."
The ATA says jets carrying commercial passengers use 66% of air traffic control services but pay 92% of money that goes into fund, while corporations use about 16% but pay under 8%.
JetBlue Airways has broken with the commercial airline industry on how the funding structure should be changed.
As Congress debates funding for the FAA, the agency has already started to award contracts for an upgrade of its antiquated air-traffic control system.
In August, defense electronics-maker ITt and French communications specialist Thales (FR:012132: news, chart, profile) , won a contract worth up $1.8 billion to build key technology for the satellite system.
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I don't want age 65 now OR later...but if it comes down to user fees for GA or immediate age 65, I say let's get the age discrimination lawsuits over with.

NO USER FEES.

This is ridiculous. Age-65 directly affects your career progression, but GA user fees have absolutely nothing to do with your livelihood. Not to mention that the "GA" in these user fees is only business jets, and not real general aviation. These user fees would never have any affect on you whatsoever.
 
Thank goodness "line item veto" went away. If it hadn't the bill might have passed with those few things veto'd. WHEW. I knew I still loved our President.
 
This is ridiculous. Age-65 directly affects your career progression, but GA user fees have absolutely nothing to do with your livelihood. Not to mention that the "GA" in these user fees is only business jets, and not real general aviation. These user fees would never have any affect on you whatsoever.

User fees would affect us--the guys at the fractionals and corporate would absorb the cost and would pass it on or take it out of labor. While not directly our labor pool, we all benefit when GV drivers are well paid too.

Additionally--taxes have a way of trickling down. This year--a King Air or Citation has to pay to file IFR. Three years down the road, I could be asked to the same thing for my Navion.

Finally--one of the few areas where this country has a solid, dominating industrial base is aviation. WHY would be want to put a tax and that and potentially harm what is a very successful part of American industry. The Canadians and Brazilians and French have been successful too, but around the globe a heck of a lot of airplanes are made my Beech, Cessna, Cirus, Gulfstream etc etc. We need to encourage and support that base--not stick another tick on it to suck the life out to support the unproductive.
 
User fees would affect us--the guys at the fractionals and corporate would absorb the cost and would pass it on or take it out of labor. While not directly our labor pool, we all benefit when GV drivers are well paid too.

I see your point, but what about airline labor? Do you think having airlines pay the bulk of these fees have had no impact at all on the pay of airline employees? I don't know if it has or has not, but if it is assumed that fractionals and corporate aviation will pass these costs to labor the same argument could be made for the airlines.
 
Furloughed80 said:
Do you think having airlines pay the bulk of these fees have had no impact at all on the pay of airline employees?

Airlines don't pay most the fees, their passengers do. Besides, airlines are the primary users and beneficiaries of an air traffic system that was built to specifically cater to their hub-and-spoke system.

PCL_128 said:
This is ridiculous. Age-65 directly affects your career progression, but GA user fees have absolutely nothing to do with your livelihood. Not to mention that the "GA" in these user fees is only business jets, and not real general aviation. These user fees would never have any affect on you whatsoever.

"Never have any affect on me whatsoever"? Come on now, don't be so naive or short-sighted about the sum of the aviation industry.

I'm not willing to screw somebody else just so I can get mine. Besides, the age is going to change sooner OR later, if it happening sooner prevents user fees (the same fees that have DESTROYED GA in most other countries) then so be it.
 
Do foreign airlines pay nav fees in the US, because I know the rest of the world, well most anyway, ch$arges an arm and a leg from US operators. Saw somewhere that overflying China in a GV was $3000+.
 
User fees would affect us--the guys at the fractionals and corporate would absorb the cost and would pass it on or take it out of labor. While not directly our labor pool, we all benefit when GV drivers are well paid too.

We don't benefit even the slightest bit from any corporate pilot salaries. It never enters the equation in any contract negotiations. Only other airlines are used for comparisons by both management and the unions.
 

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