Mostly Ignored: Airline Ticket Fees Benefit Non-commercial Airports

Despite a headline which should have raised a lot of eyebrows (“Airline Passengers Subsidizing Private Aviation”), the travel media mostly ignored another potentially hot issue. A recent Associated Press story, reported on CNN.com last week, raised the issue that many ticket fees airline passengers pay are used for benefits to private aviation airports (which don’t see commercial air traffic, and therefore have no direct benefit for commercial passengers).

The story leads by saying: “The federal government has taken billions of dollars from the taxes and fees paid by airline passengers every time they fly and awarded it to small airports used mainly by private pilots and globe-trotting corporate executives.”

Fees and taxes on airline tickets just keep increasing. Read the full AP article, and if this makes you mad, contact your Senators and Representatives. Congress is currently looking into new ways of financing the FAA (which doles out the money to private airports) before the agency’s funding expires on September 30.