Let Us Not Wound General Aviation, Excise Taxes and User Fees Can Kill This Industry

By STEPHEN COONTS

I am writing about the Federal Aviation Administration proposal to fund future operations with user fees on general aviation.

Although my wife and I are residents of Colorado, we own a farm in Pocahontas County about 10 miles from Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s farm. Ours is three miles north of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, between Arbovale and Boyer.

I grew up in Buckhannon, and after graduation from West Virginia University in 1968, entered U.S. Navy flight training. I flew A-6 Intruders in Vietnam and spent a total of nine years on active duty.

I have been involved with some aspect of aviation essentially all my adult life. I hold a commercial pilot’s license, single- and multi-engine ratings, and a single-engine seaplane rating.

My wife, Deborah, began flying in 1995 and has a commercial ticket, single- and multi-engine ratings, a single-engine seaplane rating, and is a certified flight instructor.

We keep three small airplanes at our West Virginia farm and love to give rides in them.

We are certainly not unique. Tens of thousands of people all over America are living the flying dream in one form or another, and tens of thousands of people make their living in the jobs general aviation provides. General aviation contributes billions of dollars every year to the American economy.

Buckhannon, my hometown, is a classic example of the economic stimulus general aviation provides to a community. The new airport there, built with 90 percent federal funds that Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Robert Byrd worked hard to make available, is not only creating aviation jobs, but is an essential public facility that allows various industries to locate and grow in Upshur County.

General aviation transports executives to small towns all over America that the airlines do not service.

But all that is going to change if the Bush administration’s proposal to levy user fees on general aviation is allowed to become law.

User fees will wound, then slowly kill general aviation. Young people with dreams of flying will find that the 70-cent a gallon tax on av-gas and the user fees on FAA services push up the cost of learning to fly. Inevitably the number of young people getting into aviation will drop.

Flying will become more expensive, and inevitably some people who now fly will find they can no longer afford it.

Airplane manufacturers will sell fewer new planes, there will be less traffic at small airports, and inevitably, as sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, small airports will close as the number of users falls.

The communities dependent upon these airports as public facilities will suffer accordingly.

As the number of people in aviation declines, the FAA will demand more and more money from those who are left, forcing out more and more people in a vicious cycle of decline and eventual death.

As public policy, excise taxes work great if one wants to tax cigarettes out of existence, but excise taxes and user fees will have a similar effect on general aviation. Together they destroyed general aviation in Europe and have begun sucking the lifeblood from general aviation in Canada.

The sky should be free to everyone. It has been since the Wright brothers made their first flights at Kitty Hawk.

The opportunity for people of average means to fly is one of our most cherished American freedoms. The ability to own or rent a little plane and fly the length and breath of this great land, from sea to shining sea, whenever the spirit moves you and you need to restore your soul, is uniquely American. It is our heritage.

Let’s not steal the aviation dream from our youth and the generations still to come to fund paychecks for bureaucrats today.

We hope Sens. Rockefeller and Byrd use their influence and position to defeat the Bush administration’s proposal to kill the future to pay for today.

Coonts is author of 14 New York Times’ best selling books, the first of which was “Flight of the Intruder,” published by the Naval Institute Press in 1986. The Coontses live in Colorado Springs, Colo.

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