FAA pushes for fuel tax hike at smaller airports

Houma aviation director: Increase would be ‘a killer for general aviation’

MICHAEL BROSSETTE

The Houma-Terrebonne Airport, located in southeast Houma, is a general aviation airport, meaning that it serves smaller airplanes compared to the larger commercial facilities like Louis Armstrong New Orleans International and Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airports.

Being smaller also means that Houma-Terrebonne Airport pays a lower amount of taxes, in the form of a general aviation fuel tax, to maintain the national air traffic system.

Commercial airports pay hefty Passenger Facility Charges (PFC’s), or passenger taxes, as their portion of federal taxes paid to sustain the country’s flight system.

However, according to the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development’s Director of Aviation Phil Jones, the Federal Aviation Administration is pushing to make smaller airports like Houma-Terrebonne pay a higher general aviation fuel tax, currently at 20 cents a gallon.

The suggested fuel tax hike is contained in an 88-page proposal by the FAA “with three pages worth of additions,” Jones said.

The rate could go as high as 70 cents a gallon, which would be “a killer for general aviation,” he said.

The general aviation fuel tax is not levied “gallon by gallon,” Jones said. A state “revenue estimating committee surveys airports to see how many gallons were pumped,” he said.

A recent report by the Associated Press states that “general aviation” airports are “intended for such uses as serving leisure pilots, corporate and charter flights, and various flight-related businesses, including crop-dusters.”

The report asserts that the FAA is proposing reducing commercial airport passenger fees, along with the general aviation fuel tax increase.

But Jones said that the FAA’s suggested lowering of passenger taxes is “misleading.”

“It’s the spin that the FAA is putting on the proposal,” he said. The initiative by the FAA, in fact, “increases PFC’s that airports can charge,” he said.

The increase “is good because this frees up money to go to general aviation airports,” he said. “The bad part (of the FAA’s proposal) is that general aviation would have to sustain an increase from .20 cents a gallon to .70 cents.”

The Houma-Terrebonne Airport receives substantial federal money through the FAA’s Airport Improvement Program (AIP), which funnels funds to public airports in the U.S. mainly “for runway construction and improvement,” Jones said.

He said that Louisiana has 69 publicly-owned airports, commercial and general aviation. The Associated Press review states that, during the past two years, the AIP has distributed $40.7 million to 40 general aviation airports in Louisiana.

The AIP money cannot be used for operational expenses, like “building that part of a terminal where they put stores,” or “for salaries,” Jones said.

Houma-Terrebonne Airport received a $2,844,800 grant through the AIP on August 14, 2006 for improvements to three of its taxiways, said Airport Director Connie Lajaunie.

The reconstruction work, due to be completed by mid- to late-May, 2007, will “upgrade (the taxiways’) weight-bearing capacity to 150,000 lbs.” and will increase their width from 40 feet to 75 feet, Lajaunie said.

Also through the AIP, the airport completed improvements on the longer of its two runways on Dec.19, 2005, augmenting the runway’s weight-bearing capacity from 70,000 pounds to 150,000 pounds.

Lajaunie did not know the amount of the 2005 AIP grant, but the runway upgrade “was a larger project” than the taxiway improvements, she said.

Although the airport received no AIP money in 2007, she said that “the next AIP project is to reconstruct” another taxiway at the facility. “Engineering,” she said, for that project “is in the planning stages. We will submit it to the FAA for consideration.”

The Houma-Terrebonne Airport Commission funds its operating expenses from a 2 cents a gallon fuel flowage fee, “paid by any tenant who dispenses fuel for aviation purposes,” and from lease money the airport receives from the 1800-acre industrial park it owns adjacent to the airport, Lajaunie said.

“The fuel flowage fee is part of the rental fee (tenants) pay,” she said. “It’s not for tax purposes.”

Jones said that the FAA’s tax proposal has “88 pages,” plus the three additional pages, containing “all kinds of fees the administration of the FAA would be allowed to impose. Filing a flight plan, getting a weather briefing, could be subject to fees.”

“General aviation is not just bigwigs flying around,” he said. “It’s agricultural crop-dusters, as well as the economic impact these corporations will have when locating here. It’s more than just hobby flying.”

“Corporations will base their decisions on airports” being near to where they locate, he said. “They request longer runways to establish businesses. Plus the economic multiplier effect.”

“We underestimate the value of that as a public,” he said. “I wish we could objectively quantify that then distribute state and federal dollars where they would have the most impact.”