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Are you paying for an airstrip of convenience?
Taxpayers are paying to subsidize several airports around the country. Many don't service commercial passengers and do very little to add to the communities in which they reside. Take Williamsburg-Whitley County Airport in Kentucky. It was built with $11 million in cash from the U.S. government and usually sees only a handful of flights a day take off or touch down – some days, the runway is empty.
The source of this largesse? A federal program that few know about. To understand what's going on, you'll need to think back to the last airline ticket you bought.
You know the drill, there's the price on the screen ... and then there's the price you pay. In addition to the fare, you realize quickly that fees and taxes can mount to seemingly absurd proportions, but you have little choice in the matter. The taxes alone can hit 15 percent of what you pay for a flight. Have you ever wondered where that money goes?
(Well, now you know that a piece of it goes to Williamsburg-Whitley County Airport.)
Some of the tax money from air travel transactions is used to build new airports and maintain others – a network of 2,834 in total in the United States – that do not service passenger flights. These "general-aviation" airports are separate from the 139 commercial airports in the country that take care of almost all passenger flights.
USA Today, which deserves a hell of a lot of credit for digging into this, reviewed the first full examination of the 28-year-old Airport Improvement Program and found that $15 billion was sent to general-aviation airports. That's a considerable amount of cash to give recreational fliers a place to land.
In all fairness, there is probably some truth to the notion that these airports can attract commercial and residential development and provide some important services around medical transport via air, as some members of Congress insist. But, is it enough to justify the expense?
To Congressmen, perhaps.
USA Today reports that that "[m]embers of Congress took 2,154 trips on corporate-owned jets from 2001 to 2006," per a 2006 study by independent research group PoliticalMoneyLine. Again, in fairness, some of these airports actually provide access to their constituents. But, should a taxpayer in San Francisco finance an airport in North Andover, Massachusetts?
However you quantify the utility, it seems as though the cost is a lot higher than the benefit.
Jonathan Ornstein, CEO of Mesa Air Group (a regional), tells USA Today, "Congressmen are spending millions building runways at these little airports. That is just a complete waste of money." This is especially the case, he says, when "there is a huge requirement to overhaul infrastructure at major airports."
Click here to read the entire investigation and analysis; it's worth it.
Filed under: North America, United States, Airports
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kent Wien Sep 18th 2009 8:50AM
I'll have to disagree, Tom, albeit with a somewhat biased view as a pilot...
Taking this argument a step further, we could simply have an interstate road system that connects only the 150 largest cities.
A few numbers USAToday didn't mention (From the AOPA):
In 2007 for example:
The FAA distributed $3.34 billion in AIP funds to 2,610 airports.
341 primary airports—airports with more than 100,000 passenger boardings each year—received $2.1 billion in AIP funds. That’s an average of $6.17 million per airport.
48 commercial service airports—airports with between 2,500 and 100,000 passenger boardings—received $93 million, or an average of $1.94 million per airport.
139 GA reliever airports received $214 million, or an average of $1.54 million
982 GA airports received $617 million, or an average of $628,000.
Combined, the 389 airline airports divvied up $2,199,335,046, averaging $5.5 million per airport. The 1,121 GA airports shared $831,717,227, averaging $741,942.
An addition, $310 million was distributed through state block grant programs.
In the state of Alaska, there are over 100 airports where aircraft access with airplanes that seat 9 or less is the only physical access to the rest of the world.
Medevac flights and organ donor transfers are some of the activities that takes place at smaller airports, in addition to the business that's conducted via general aviation.
Tom Johansmeyer Sep 18th 2009 8:54AM
Very interesting data-- definitely adds some texture to the situation. My big question is, for those airports in Alaska where it's the only way to connect to the outside world, shouldn't they pay for that access? I'm not sure I'm crazy about having so much of it come out of my pocket.
Tim O'Connell Sep 18th 2009 1:45PM
I bet that if all the small planes that use these "strips of convenience" had to use the major airports instead, you would complain about the overcrowding and additional delays. There is a vibrant general aviation environment in this country, and sometimes you pay for things that you don't personally use.
Gad Barnea Sep 18th 2009 1:57PM
Tom, I have to join Kent and disagree with you here, but the USA Today article had a lot of very serious problems with it and read very much like a propaganda piece of the airlines ahead of the FAA Reauthorization Act Senate vote.
Kent mentions some of the problems, but I'd like to add that the article fails to mention that all GA pilots and operators pay into the 'Airport/Airways Trust Fund' through fuel taxes. These taxes allow aircraft users to pay federal taxes “at the pump” – general aviation pays a 21.9 cents-per-gallon tax on jet fuel and a 19.4 cents-per-gallon tax on aviation gasoline (100LL).
Also, of the total investment in airport projects, congress allocated $3 for air carrier airport improvements to every $1 to be spent at GA airports.
I made my view on this clear yesterday on our blog (flymiwokblog.com) - so I won't waste too much space here.. but we should expect the airline lobby to ratchet up the rhetoric in the coming weeks.
Thanks again for an awesome blog!
Gad Barnea, FlyMiwok
David Sep 18th 2009 3:44PM
Tom,
As a current private pilot with plans to become a commercial pilot in the next several years, I use both GA and commercial airports. I won't try to include facts because Kent and Gad have already included the ones from AOPA. I'll just say that as a travel blog and one that I check regularly, I'm kind of surprised to see a post like this. If there weren't other bloggers like Kent on this website that post about aviation, I would not be returning.
-David
Mark Sep 19th 2009 12:28PM
There are many like David who work their way up through the ranks of general aviation to eventually become airline pilots. Every one of those pilots has spent hours making hundreds of landings at general aviation airports training to be airline pilots. There is no way all of that training could be done at the commercial service airports, so every time you fly the airlines, you benefit from GA airports.
Paul Davis Sep 18th 2009 8:14PM
There are a lot of things I don't use personally that I have to pay for through taxes. Some of them I agree with and others I don't. I don't agree with over 70% of the taxes I pay going to fund the Military instead of education but I understand it.
The same with GA airports. I'm a pilot and use GA airports all the time. I'm pleased to know that if something horrible happend, say like Katrina, that there are 2 GA airports with in 20 miles of my house where rescue workers could evac people and bring releaf supplys. I don't want it to happen but it nice to know they little airports are there.
How would you feel about things if you didn't get that federally funded student loan because all the people who didn't want to go to College got together and stopped the government from funding them? It's pretty much the same thing.
Ash Sep 19th 2009 12:27AM
Oh my god you mean EVERYONE doesn't get the immediate personal benefit of EVERY dollar spent in the federal budget?
You, sir, have stunned me with your powers of reading and maths.
Ash Sep 19th 2009 12:29AM
Also, I'm tired of paying for roads of convenience in towns I don't even live in. It's a government conspiracy. CONSPIRACY I TELL YOU!
Joe Sep 19th 2009 4:50AM
Oh, this story is making the rounds again. I remember when the airline lobbyists were making the same argument in 2002, 2004, and now 2009.
While I certainly have gripes about taxes they are used to spread out the wealth to ensure all areas have the same quality of life. Those in cities rarely complain about how taxes are spent in less fortunate areas of the state.
Building an airstrip is less costly than leveling roads to the most remote areas of our country.