By Mike Scilingo

The airlines are lobbying the FAA a proposal  to charge a user fee to access the IFR (instrument flight rules) system, this means that every time a private pilot wants and needs to fly an approach he or she will be charged a fee to file and fly IFR then be charged again to fly the approach to the airport.

The cost of flying is so expensive today that many pilots have had to give up flying. For those who still fly this tax or access fees will cause pilots to take unnecessary chances when the weather is marginal. Pilots will push beyond the safety limits and try to make it through bad weather without using the IFR system they have already paid for. As it is to maintain an IFR rating a pilot must stay proficient, this is done by shooting 6 approaches every 6 months 3 night and 3 day landings to keep current. Now if the pilot is charged for every time he accesses the tower and every time he needs to use the system there is a great incentive not to practice, because the cost has gone to extremes. This is an obvious ploy to eliminate as many general aviation pilots as they can. We pilots have always been heavily burdened with high fuel and maintenance costs, such as rules that require certified A&P (aircraft & powerplant) mechanics to perform an annual inspection of the aircraft that costs a minimum of 2 to 3 thousand dollars whether there is anything wrong or not, and I haven’t even mentioned insurance costs yet. Insurance has probably knocked more pilots out of the sky than anything else as far as high costs are concerned. This fee will put a disperportionate burden on small aircraft owners and renters.

Here is how the outrageous fee would work against the small airplane pilot. The fees for a given airliner would be the same as for say a single engine 4 seat Piper or Cessna. One airliner with 200 passengers can afford to pay an access fee much easier than a 4 seat general aviation airplane with only the pilot to pay the same fee to fly the same approach. You can see how this is a much more disperportionate burden on the one pilot compared to the big airliner. Also the small airplane pilot may shoot 12 or 20 approaches in a week or two while the airline pilot though shooting the same or more approaches pays nothing the airline company does.

The current system uses fuel taxes which is anonymous and is the same for everyone if you fly more you pay more and that’s the proper way to apply user fees rather than an access fee. The people own the airways and the system is to be provided to them and it is the government’s job to insure that. Europe has the access tax and it is a complete disaster, and a major intrusion of privacy through unnecessary fees.

This rotten scheme has and is being proposed through the Bush and now Obama administrations.

Just another example of the citizens’ fight against a government run by the criminally insane.