User Fees: An Eye-Opening Article

The latest issue of AOPA Pilot came in today. There's always a lot of interesting stuff in Pilot each month, but the one article that caught my attention was on European-Style User Fees. How the Euro user fee structure works, and the consequences it brings to the GA community, is particularly relevant to all US general aviation pilots, because the Bush Administration, together with the FAA, is pushing for a possibly similar fee structure here.

So what do user fees cost in real life? To find out, AOPA went on an IFR flight from London's Biggin Hill Airport to Frankfurt. For this flight, in a Twin Comanche, the user fees alone totaled up to be over $200! And that doesn't even include talking to a preflight weather briefer -- it's cheaper to obtain weather information over the Internet (for which you pay a separate $100/year subscription fee -- there's no free aviationweather.gov in Europe). Anything and everything is pay-as-you-go. For example:

• A missed approach, even though you didn't land, still results in an Eurocontrol charge of about $20.
• Weather didn't turn out as expected, and everything near a major airline hub airport is "fogged in", but you still have to land (maybe you're low on fuel)? Eurocontrol bureaucrats in Brussels say: "hmm, too bad for your pocketbook..." If it happens near Frankfurt/Main, with no other options available, that'll be about $1,000+ for landing fees and penalty fees because you showed up out of the blue without a reserved slot.

There's another side to the user fee debate that's a bit less obvious: I always wondered why there were so many US-registered aircraft operating in Europe. The AOPA Pilot article provided an explanation: flying a US-registered aircraft means that you do not have to have an European license. Since the cost of obtaining a US license is so much less -- with more opportunities for practice (after all, we don't pay for touch-and-goes or missed approaches in the States) -- many European airplane owners opt to get their licenses in the USA and register their aircraft there. After all, that little plastic card from the US Department of Transportation allows a person to fly an N-registered airplane pretty much anywhere in the world.

There's an eye-opening 8 minute user fee video on AOPA's website (accessible to everyone, not just members) that details the London-Frankfurt experience. Well worth watching.

The Flying Doctor

Back in June, I started this blog with a post entitled "Convenience of an Airplane" -- it was meant to highlight how I actually got to use an airplane for something other than training or flying from Point A to Point B for the sole purpose of conducting the flight.

And, recently, NBC's Today Show featured an "American Story" on exactly that topic. It profiled an Idaho doctor who flies a Cessna 210 out of Hailey to some of the most remote areas of Idaho to see his patients. You can watch the story here. Now, that's a powerful video story detailing how General Aviation is Serving America! It's one of the few stories in the media that portrays GA in a good light -- a portrayal which it desperately needs now that there is talk in Congress of user fees, avgas tax hikes, etc.

Long Time, No Flying

Wow, it's been a long time since I blogged. Coincidentally, it's also been a long time since I've last sat at the controls of an aircraft. :-( But for me, as I think for many private pilots, the winter season is the "low" season for flying. While you'd think that with an instrument rating, I could venture "out and about" during the winter, it's just not always so. The aircraft I fly lack anti-icing or de-icing equipment, and the nearby mountains around Seattle are justly called the Cascade Ice Machine. And then, there's the winter sports in the Pacific Northwest. I'm an avid skier, and going skiing on a weekend means no flying that weekend. On top of all that, I was busy renovating and moving into my new condo in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle.

But, now that's done. The winter season is almost over. I've already been hitting Microsoft Flight Simulator X to brush up on instrument procedures. Time to go back to the airport, refamiliarize myself with the aircraft, do some landings, and start working (yet again, this time for real) on that commercial ticket! (Milen, BTW, is far ahead of me - he's now a commercial pilot for single and multi-engine -- congrats, Milen!)

PS: wow, what happens to an unmaintained blog. The number of inappropriate comments had me deleting them for a good 5-10 minutes. As a result, I've made it so that only registered Blogger users can comment. Sorry for any inconvenience... :-(