Flying the Stratified Skies
posted by Frank Pasquale
Travel has always served to remind us of the divisions our “classless society” tries so hard to downplay. Sam Walton may have driven an old truck, but you’d be hard-pressed to find most top executives or trust-funders flying in less-than-first-class digs. As the song in Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang put it,
O the posh posh traveling life, the traveling life for me
Pardon the dust of the upper crust – fetch us a cup of tea
Port out, starboard home, posh with a capital P. . .
Admittedly, for those of us crushed into coach, there was always a happy flipside to the narrative: the profligates up front were paying so much more for their seats, effectively subsidizing the rest of us.
But that subsidy effect has been on the wane in recent years. And now wealthy fliers have found a new way to effectively assure that the rest of us are subsidizing them:
Corporate jets pay a fraction of the taxes and fees that commercial airliners do. The F.A.A. estimates that private planes, which include both corporate jets and weekend fliers, account for 16 percent of the air traffic control system’s overhead but contribute only 3 percent of the fees earmarked to run the system.
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The Air Transport Association has . . . created a Web-based ad campaign featuring a fictional traveler, Edna, complaining about the fee disparity while the computer screen displays waves of corporate jets filling the skies before and after sporting events like the Kentucky Derby and the Masters golf tournament.
It’s enough to wilt the mint in your julep. As the campy YouTube ad sloganeers, travelers like “wearing big wigs, not subsidizing them!” Edna (pictured above) wonders “Why should the rest of us pay ten times more using the same services?”
Fortunately, the FAA has heard her pain, and is planning on “sharply increasing the fuel tax for private jets and also hitting corporate fliers with extra charges to land at any of the country’s 30 most congested airports.”
August 28, 2007 at 9:45 am
Posted in: Administrative Law, Admiralty, Law and Inequality, Tax
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Responses (1)
Doug - September 26, 2007 at 9:35 am
Ok… so the airline pays 10 times as much in fees. The logic of increasing the fees on the corporate flyer only makes sense if you think about it from the perspective of number of aircraft. When you consider that a single commercial aircraft will carry, on average, more than 10 times the number of people, then the per-person cost of those fees is actually very comparable for the commercial airline versus the corporate flyer. “Edna” is NOT paying 10 times as much. She will pay a small percentage of the cost that the airline will pay to the FAA for using the services. Those costs are spread out over many passengers. And let’s face facts… the FAA is the government and higher taxes on private aircraft only serve to fatten an already bloated beaurocracy. The government NEVER has enough money, no matter how much they have. And let’s keep in mind WHO will pay for the higher taxes and fees that the corporations will pay: It certainly won’t be the corporations who fly the corporate aircraft. Those costs (imposed by government) will be passed on to the customer who purchases the products made by the companies. Ultimately, higher fees hurt everyone with only one exception: The government.
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