Originally published at: Mesa Gateway Adds Light Aircraft Landing Fee
New landing fee announced just a week after those at Mesa’s Falcon Field.
Was destined to happen. First, where do you think the traffic avoiding the fees at Falcon were going to go. Second, a (bad) precedent was set.
Unfortunately the (shrinking) GA community is caught in the middle. The mega flight schools are driving up traffic, costs, and noise. The locals are tired of subsidizing these programs indirectly by funding the airport.
The old model of being infrastructure (like a highway or a bridge) is broken by the shear volume of traffic large flight training operations in the region. While shrinking, there is still the regular Joe out there flying his Cherokee/Skyhawk/RV that just wants to see grandma or get a $100 burger. That group is caught in the middle, probably diverting away from the craziness. So in the long term they lose, the community loses (because the on purpose GA flyer is going to avoid this) and it increases the ‘doom loop’ of driving away business.
Solution? I would propose a twofold one. First, allow any aircraft a set number of free (or minimal) landings over a calendar period. This way you’re not scaring away the transient stopping for fuel, or in town to see grandma.
Second, this needs to be addressed on a regional level. As a region a policy needs to be adopted so that all airports in the area are covered and don’t have traffic pushed on them because other airports have fees. Every flight training organization in the area should pay into a pool on an operations per a quarter basis, with payouts to each airport weighted to the number of operations at specific fields. This addresses high volume operations, deters moving operations to non-fee airports, and lets the high use schools cover the costs that the airports incur to accommodate them.
Of course, that’s too logical and would never be adopted!
This should’ve been handled with a fuel tax, not landing fees. Inevitably landing fees disproportionally affect light aircraft. A fuel tax distributes the burden across who causes the most wear on the airport proportionally by default. There is no logic to having a $2.22/1000 lb. fee (per current airport website) for aircraft over 12,500 lbs., then a much higher rate for smaller aircraft.
Great observation. As much as I wouldn’t like it, 2.22/1000lb weight is palatable. $25 isn’t
Obviously they are targeting the flight training industry. They’ve forgotten that not every Skyhawk, Cherokee, etc is a trainer. GA pilots are not necessarily’rich’ either. I bought my last two planes for less than a new F150 pickup. It’s my hobby. While I’m not exactly poor, I’m not rolling in it as well.
This becoming the norm in many areas. Imagine if all other government services and facilities had to be supported by their users? Bus systems, public parks, bike lanes, etc? It’s flawed logic and I suspect the city omitted other revenue from flight schools and GA pilots in their calculations. I suspect this has everything to do with getting rid of the “riff-raff” on GA ramps so the G650 crowd doesn’t suffer any delays or have the peasants observing them too closely 