On Apr 17, 6:45 am, hummingbird wrote:
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 09:30:42 GMT 'William Black'
posted this onto rec.travel.air:





"hummingbird" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 06:37:04 +0200 'Mxsmanic'
posted this onto rec.travel.air:

Apologies if someone else has already posted this:

http://us.cnn.com/2007/TRAVEL/04/16/....ap/index.html

Somebody really hates GA.

Perhaps one reason that money is being fed to the smaller airports is
to make them more attractive to commercial airlines to start up direct
point-to-point services instead of using big hubs and big jets. That
would be exactly in line with Boeing's strategy in the light of Airbus
A380 competition.

Certainly the very low cost airlines in Europe use smaller provincial
airports because the fees are much lower.

Are there very low cost airlines in the USA who use smaller fields?

Can't say for sure but I would think the US has plenty of low-cost
carriers like Ryanair et al using smaller airports.

Underlying my previous comment was the possibility that the US
fed govt are quietly feeding taxpayers money into smaller airports
to develop them, thereby helping Boeing who want to encourage
point-to-point flying in its 787 Dreamliner instead of airlines using
the A380 in/out of large hubs. I think it's called protectionism.

But of course we know that the US is all in favour of free trade
and doesn't indulge in such tactics. ho ho

Never blame on cunning, that which can be explained by stupidity.
The US fed govt. has been "feeding" money to smaller local
governments in all manner for decades. We call it "pork" over here.
Airports are just one of many ways. In ye olde days LBJ refered to
it as "revenue sharing". These days the mother of all methods is
through HSA. There is money to "secure" smaller airports. This
can be used to install new monitoring and communciation equipment,
erect fences with "security" gates, build new "secure" hangers, etc.
Frequently these are new facilities the local community had been
trying to build for years anyway. Or regular maintance that needed
doing anyway. But now the feds are there to help!

Trust me, when the feds want to "help" Boeing, they pay the money
directly to Boeing.