Originally published at: GAO Finds FBO Fees Often Missing Online
Investigators posing as pilots found required charges were frequently incomplete or inconsistent.
Another area where disclosure would help. Many FBO’s say “fees waived with minimum fuel purchase”. That sounds good (bait), but if you dig deeper, “all fees or just some?” you find they do not waive all fees and some tell you what is or is not waived. I know one FBO that adds an “airport security fee,” which is 100% kept by the FBO. Hearing that name, many pilots would incorrectly assume it is an airport-charged fee… exactly what the FBO wants you to think, and it never gets waived. If the FBO has some sort of fee schedule they follow, why can’t they publish it. Sure, it might be complicated, but they do not want to include the line item “if the pilots are willing to pay these fees, then charge them.”
We need a law that requires access to publicly funded airports. There will be no mercy from private-equity backed FBOs unless the law says general aviation flights can opt for no-services, no FBO fee access to publicly funded airports. We the people OWN these airports, not the FBOs. There MUST be a public place to park without anything more than a single digit fee. Only then will FBOs return to treating us well.
Precisely the problem. The best airport fee experience I had was a semi-rural airport in SE Michigan near the Canadian border. Weather turned bad and we diverted and landed before crossing the border. The owner told us (flight of 3) that the airport was not federally funded and they maintained it with their very reasonable landing and parking fee and fuel sales. She was quite apologetic and we were happy to pay and top our fuel tanks. It became a regular stop.
Not so with the “security fee/handling fee/dis’n’dat fee” crowd at bigger (and federally subsidized) airports. One well known chain operator at a very underutilized city airport waited until I dropped my passengers in the pouring rain and carted their luggage to their cars in the parking lot (personal/non-rev flight in a single) until I was ready for engine start to run out and demand a $75 “handling fee.” That airport is even more underutilized today.
It is not just airport FBOs who are cagey about their costs. I just reviewed a bill for a brief hospital observation stay for a family member. It was nothing even close to their legally mandated posted charges, which they justified by saying it was an inpatient cost, even though the stay was outpatient observation. Profit by obscurity seems to be the rule in public service businesses whether private, public, or healthcare. This must change, today.
@Amster is right, we do need a law that provides public access to grant assurance airports. I am all in favor of having an FBO have an opportunity to provide excellent services we need, at a reasonable and competitive price. I am not in favor of a government body obtaining multi-million dollar grant assurances to build said FBO a hangar, charge minimal rent to the FBO, and the government built hanger then being used to charge outlandishly profitable hangar and ramp access costs to transient or based pilots with minimal return to the airport or its taxpayers. And many of us need the following: A half a mile of runway (turf, tarmac or concrete), a place in the grass to tie down, a toilet and a fuel pump, nothing more. Yet we are forced to pay homage to the multimillion dollar lounge and cheap cookies.
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