Landing Fee Epidemic
The Palo Alto City Council has approved imposition of landing fees on all non-based aircraft, including touch-and-go operations. The fee is $3/1000 lbs./operation. Due to the significant volume of flight training at Palo Alto, these fees are likely to shift operations and noise to other nearby airports. As a result, Santa Clara County is considering imposing operations fees on all aircraft—both based at RHV and not based there. Hayward is also considering imposing landing fees. This “arms race” of fees will increase pressure on airports without fees to adopt fees in order to discourage the extra traffic that would naturally have occurred at Palo Alto and other fee airports.
[The net effect of fees will add expense for all pilots and discourage maintaining currency as well as pursuit of pilot licenses and ratings. Increased expenses inevitably push pilots and owners who are at the margin out of aviation altogether, which further erodes the economic basis for maintenance facilities and other critical airport operations. While the new fees may increase government revenue in the short term, the long term effect will be reduction in flight activity, fuel sales, demand for hangar and tiedown space, and erosion of the airport’s economic ecosystem.]
This is not just a San Carlos problem, nor will a Congressional banning of the use of ADS-B to collect fees solve it. It is a regional and national issue that will have significant negative impact. As such, it requires intervention at the federal level. The FAA has recently indicated concerns about discriminatory landing fees at Mesa, Arizona that appear to be designed to discourage flight training and that differentiate between transient and based aircraft. https://avbrief.com/faa-urges-mesa-to-delay-implementation-of-potentially-illegal-landing-fees/
SCAPA is working with the County Airport management to advocate against this disastrous trend and to engage regulators and national aviation groups. Please share this information with your flying network, and urge them to join SCAPA and make the effort to fight for our freedom to fly.
