The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the\nworld\u2019s largest pilot organization, along with support from 600 active pilot\ngroups across the country, is encouraging the United States Senate to support\nan amendment offered by U.S. Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.) that would ensure pilots\nhave access to public-use airports with fair, reasonable, and transparent fees.\nAOPA launched a call-to-action to its 300,000 members urging them to contact\ntheir respective U.S. Senators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Budd amendment is intended to address a growing problem\nwith large chain Fixed Base Operators (FBOs) that are imposing egregious\nparking and other fees on private pilots. FBOs are located at airports and\nprovide fuel and other services to aircraft operators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, FBOs and even\ngovernment-owned airports in Las Vegas are imposing what is referred to as a\n\u201cSpecial Event Fee.\u201d These fees are in addition to already imposed parking fees\nand can range from $3,000 to $15,000 per aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Airport and FBO interests in Washington have lobbied heavily\nagainst the Budd amendment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thousands of pilots have contacted AOPA and described being\ncharged hundreds of dollars for an hour of parking, or even more to simply drop\noff and pick up a passenger. A flight\ninstructor was charged $80 to park for 10 minutes so his student could use the\nrestroom. Pilots are outraged that their\naccess to these airports is being limited and the Super Bowl fees have just\nhighlighted the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToday, the FAA is required to ensure airport fees are fair\nand reasonable and clearly that is not happening at many airports,” said\nAOPA President Mark Baker. “We support FBOs and airports, but we need some\nguardrails around these fees or at a minimum have the FAA enforce current rules\nand regulations or change current rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Senate Commerce Committee is expected to take up a\ncomprehensive aviation bill, commonly referred to as the FAA reauthorization,\non Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the world\u2019s largest pilot organization, along with support from 600 active pilot groups across the country, is encouraging the United States Senate to support an amendment offered by U.S. Senator Ted Budd (R-N.C.) that would ensure pilots have access to public-use airports with fair, reasonable, and transparent fees. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","category-north-carolina"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27793,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27792\/revisions\/27793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateaviationjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}