User Fees for Private Jets

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Update 2-27-2007 - If you have two minutes, please email this template to your Members of Congress and ask them not to impose a fee every time an airplane flies. The process is easy and the cause is worthy.

There is a lot of legislative talk in the business aviation community right now about so-called User Fees. I frequently see phrases like this in our industry magazines:

"If you use a general aviation aircraft for a business purpose, you are under attack!"

The airlines want to impose more than $2 billion in user fees to run things like the air traffic control system.

Their logic is that while one huge commercial jet may carry 200 passengers, it represents only one small dot on the air traffic control radar. A business jet carrying four people takes up as much space in the air traffic control system as a huge commercial jet.

You may have seen this image showing the number of private jets leaving the Super Bowl in 2007.

Not many people know it, but that graphic was created by the Air Transport Association (airlines lobby) to smear the business aviation community.