The Safford City Council unanimously voted to eliminate landing fees for aircraft under 4,000 pounds at Safford Regional Airport in Graham County, Arizona.
Tariffs? We donât need no stinkinâ tariffs!
A unamimous vote from a City Council to support their local airport and promote GA.
The fees may have been nominal in the first place, but still, they actually listened to the pilots and hence âCity officials hope the revised fee structure will foster a more welcoming environment for the aviation community.â
Go Safford!
It looks like after reviewing about 97 airports under Vector Airport Systems that target GA pilots, especially those flying aircraft under 12,500 lbs, need to start double-checking the fine print. What used to be free at most fields is now a patchwork of landing fees, touch-and-go charges, and ramp fees that show up weeks after your flight. Vectorâs system might make it easier for airports to collect, but it adds a layer of unpredictability for pilots just trying to stay current or flight schools. The biggest shift? Even a training hop or fuel stop can turn into a bill if youâre not careful. Itâs death by a thousand paper landings.
Holy moly!!! Iâve not even heard of these guys until your post here. They have airports everywhere! With âautomated billing of landing feesâ using their âPlanePASSâ system, they seem to envision being just like toll collectors. It was extremely difficult to figure out what landing fees might be (for example, KSAFâthey list a URL that does not exist, or KMYL which does the same, or KCOE which has at least 50 different fees for every combination of things you might be doing, or KBFI which says there is no place to park thatâs not billed at $5 instantly). On top of that, these fees do NOT go through the FBO, so the FBO canât help you figure out what they are.
Why is this not the top story of AOPA, EAA, and all the rest? This is monetization gone wild!
Iâm still not seeing it at AOPA. That page you list has not a single mention of Vector or âAutomated Landing Feesâ or âPlanePassâ. A search of their website brings up less than 5 mentions, and most notably in a story about using ADS-B for landing fees exclusively in Florida.
A self-styled âFastPassâ company thatâs proliferating this quickly deserves more alert than that!
@ menzelw â Good point but⌠EAA nailed it. Where AOPA is more vague, the EAA piece doesnât dance around the issue. It calls automated landing fees what they are: a creeping threat to pilot freedom, privacy, and safety. It clearly says this isnât just about tech or cost, itâs about preserving access and culture in general aviation. Meanwhile, AOPAâs writeup spends too much time walking the line between public relations and soft advocacy. They express concern but wrap it in bureaucratic language and leave too much room for compromise. EAA hits harder and makes it personal, as it should be.
Vector apparently is not the only company using ADS-B data to collect landing fees. Hereâs a copy of AOPA president Pleasanceâs letter to the acting FAA administrator in February regarding this matter.
That letter talks about using ADS-B for landing fees. This doesnât strike me as the core issue with Vectorâthey are forming partnerships with airports to monetize everythingâevery movement, every operation, every inch of tarmac, and doing so without anyone locally knowing what the fees even could be. Check KSAF, for example, the FBO no longer is involved in fee collection, so they have no idea what they are. Whom do you call? No one! The only link Vector provides is to a non-existent web page at the City of Santa Fe. So, what am I paying if I land, park, refuel, do a touch-and-go, or sneeze while on downwind? Who knows!
The alarm Iâm feeling is about cities hiring a firm to monetize their airport aggressively. ADS-B for automated fees is a real important, but separate, issue.
Obviously Vector et al. get a cut for their service, so pilots are basically paying to be taxed. Fine, maybe some donât care or maybe some canât see past the cowling the storm clouds building from these actions.
For me I will avoid any airport with this egregious abuse of ADS-B data, and land, eat or get fuel from airports who do not contract with these for-profit-only businesses.
I really donât have much faith in the alphabets either to successfully make any changes. Frankly the politics and money involved seems to drive their missions that always result in giving only lip service to the slack end of GA, while the exchange with bizav and corporate yields much higher returns.
The pilots were listened to and successful at Safford for speaking out, and if these players wonât listen to anything but greed, we use boycotts to our advantage down to where the tires meet the runway.
Removing Vector and any third party companies using adsb should be top priority for all pilots, AOPA, and EAA
I wonder if Vector is also behind all the red light cameras popping up everywhere. If not, itâs someone similar.
What happens if you simply donât pay them? Itâs a private company, they canât yank your ticket. Can they prevent you from renewing your airworthiness certificate?
If enough pilots donât pay them, theyâll cry foul all the way to bankruptcy court. Good riddance imho
Youâll all see a lot more specifics on this topic from us at AOPA in the weeks and months ahead. Itâs not just the landing fees, and itâs not just the use of ADS-B for collecting these fees that have us concerned . Itâs also the proliferating types of fees that are rapidly growing at airports around the country. Weâre seeing Ramp Fees, Convenience Fees, Security Fees, Habitat Fees (what the heck is that!!?), Landing Fees and others.
At AOPA weâre concerned about the overall proliferation of fees and the negative impact these can have on the health of GA. While we fight for a more âfair and reasonableâ approach to this, weâre also investing more to ensure you all âknow before you goâ so you can make informed decisions on which airports to utilize and which ones to avoid and to make sure youâre never surprised after the fact.
AOPA will continue to partner with pilots and the Airport Support Network volunteers around the country to help fight these battles and keep the costs of general aviation down while promoting a health aviation ecosystem.
Darren
President & CEO, AOPA
Thanks for your response, Darren. What a growing menace these fee structures are in an economically volatile time for us. Keep up the needed work.