ATC expenditures on GA. Was: Accident Prone Pilots

"Skylune" wrote:
You will see that GA is the most heavily subsidized form of
transportation in the country. By far. And avgas taxes contribute
next to nothing to the AV trust fund.

Are you ready for some serious numbers and analysis Skylune?

Assume for the moment that the burden on air traffic services is roughly
proportional to the number of IFR hours flown.

Using statistics from [1], there were 28.1 million hours flown by GA and
air taxi service in FY 2004. The number of IFR flight plan hours flown
(see table 4.7 in [2]) was 9.7 M, or 35% of the total. According to [3],
the number of flight hours for large air carriers was 1996 was 11.9 M,
must of which would likely have been flown IFR. (I could not find
comparable data for 2004 for large air carriers, but the tables in [4]
indicate 1996 GA hours were 26.9 M hours. Assuming the ratio of GA to
air carrier hours stayed about the same, the number of IFR hours for
large air carriers in 2004 is probably 11.9*(28.1/26.9) ~= 12.4 M
hours.)

Likewise, table 1.6 in [4] suggests that personal flights account for
~35% of the 9.7 M IFR hours flown, or ~3.4 M hours.

So crunching all the numbers, the "burden" to ATC seems to fall out like
this:

IFR flight hours requiring ATC attention:

Personal GA flights: ~3.4 million flight hours.
Large air carrier flights: ~12.4 million flight hours.
Other GA and taxi service flights: ~6.3 million flight hours.

So if my math and assumptions are correct (probably not), then GA
personal flights "use" ~15% of ATC resources. The FAA 2004 FY budget [5]
indicates the amount spent on air traffic services was ~$6,000M. A 15%
fraction yields ~$900M. According to the reference you supplied,
actual avgas tax revenues for were ~$178M. The gas tax would have to
increase by at least a factor of 5 to cover the ATC expenses for just
the personal flights.

Or looked at another way, ATC appears to expend ~$265 for each GA IFR
flight hour and ~$411 for each air carrier flight hour.

My own conclusions:

The FAA ATC system is obscenely inefficient. Removing personal GA
flights entirely from the skies would reduce the air traffic service
load only by about 15%. Setting user fees proportional to alleged actual
burden would effectively remove most GA flights and the additional tax
burden would end up costing the airlines that much more. Any attempt by
airlines to offload their tax burden to GA would fail because the money
simply isn't there.

The first step appears to be to reduce the size and cost of the FAA. It
is spending an astounding ~$30,000/year on each aircraft in the GA fleet
(i.e. ~$6000M/~200k aircraft). Or about $750,000/year on each aircraft
in the airline fleet (i.e. ~$6000M/~8k aircraft).

[1] http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/a...iation/CY2004/

[2] http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/a...FAA_2004_4.xls

[3] http://amelia.db.erau.edu/onlinebkup/RAC1033.pdf

[4] http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/a...FAA_2004_1.xls

[5] http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/...a/BIB-2004.pdf