Says User Fees Would Adversely Affect General Aviation

Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) says that the FAA should scrap a plan to impose user fees for air traffic control, because those fees for a privatized system would hurt GA should they be imposed.

In an editorial published by Politico Thursday, Pompeo (pictured) said that while GA is not how most of the general public experiences aviation, it is crucial to businesses nationwide. He said that recent drafts of the FAA reauthorization bill that must be passed by Congress by March 30th contains a proposal to privatize ATC and finance the new air traffic regulator through user fees. The fee, Pompeo says, would "place an unfair funding burden on general aviation, whose aircraft take up a large share of flights in America but use significantly less fuel than major airlines."

Pompeo says the existing fuel tax is the "most fair and accurate way to distinguish between heavy and light users of the system."

The Congressman adds that a new user-fee system would also require the creation of a new federal bureaucracy to collect the taxes.

Pompeo said that air traffic control reform must be done without creating new mandatory user fees and additional layers of bureaucracy.

FMI: Full Op-Ed