User Fees

"kontiki" wrote in message
news

I must be a dumba$$ for not comprehending but I can get the same weather
info from DUATS that I can from flight seervice. The reason I always call
FSS for a briefing (even after I have used DUATS) is to go on record as
obtaining a weather breifing (for liability reasons???).

Now if I file IFR then FSS has to be used but why couldn't I file it
on-line?
I'm not opposed to paying a fair fee for my use of DUATS (or the
equivalent)
but then I should be able to file there too.


You don't have to use FSS to file IFR, you can file on-line.

kontiki wrote:

I must be a dumba$$ for not comprehending but I can get the same weather
info from DUATS that I can from flight seervice. The reason I always call
FSS for a briefing (even after I have used DUATS) is to go on record as
obtaining a weather breifing (for liability reasons???).


I thought that using DUATS did put you on rectrod as obtaining a weather
briefing.

"kontiki" wrote in message
news
I must be a dumba$$ for not comprehending but I can get the same weather
info from DUATS that I can from flight seervice. The reason I always call
FSS for a briefing (even after I have used DUATS) is to go on record as
obtaining a weather breifing (for liability reasons???).

DUATS is an official breifing same as calling FSS.

"Glenn Jones" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Dude" wrote:

AFAIK, the big traffic increases are coming from increased use of business
jets trying to join in where the scheduled players are already trying to
crowd each other out in order to lose money on every flight. Let's say we
want a $20 fee per flight for using the IFR system.

Would that not tempt some to fly through clouds without benefit of a
clearance? Would you bother with a VFR flight plan or flight following if it
cost money?

Vaughn

"Dude" wrote:

Still, what complete idiotic, power hungry, stupid, short sighted etc.
etc. etc. thinks user fees are a fix?

The complete idiotic, power hungry, stupid, short sighted etc. etc. etc.
administration we elected.


Then "Dude" wrote:

Let's say we want a $20 fee per flight for using the IFR system. Would
it not be
easier just to raise the fuel tax a penny or two? That would raise the
same
amount would it not?

Do you burn 2000 gallons of fuel on a typical IFR flight?

--
-Elliott Drucker

"Vaughn" wrote in message
...

"Glenn Jones" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Dude" wrote:

AFAIK, the big traffic increases are coming from increased use of
business
jets trying to join in where the scheduled players are already trying to
crowd each other out in order to lose money on every flight. Let's say
we
want a $20 fee per flight for using the IFR system.

Would that not tempt some to fly through clouds without benefit of a
clearance? Would you bother with a VFR flight plan or flight following if
it cost money?

Vaughn

Another good reason to avoid the fees. The whole point of the present
system is NOT to keep you from running into me or another prop plane. Not a
big deal to them, really. However, let you run into a jet and kill someone
"important" or a bunch of commercial passengers and instead of - "Oops, we
shouldn't have charged for that!" it will be - "Those idiots are dangerous,
and we should make it even HARDER for them to use OUR sky."

Yes, it is the 21st century and psychologists and economists have been
writing theories for decades, yet it is still not common knowledge that
people will avoid spending money if they can. Even to their own peril.

"Dude" wrote in message
...

And then we could use the money to buy gear and pay controllers instead of
creating an all new department to manage the fee system!


Up here in Taxachusetts there's a long-standing feud over tolls on the
Massachusetts Turnpike. The law that authorized the bond issue to build the
pike said, tolls will be charged until the bonds are paid off, then the
tolls shall end. Well, the bonds were paid off more than 10 years ago, but
the tollbooths persist. A couple years back when the debate flared up, the
tollbooth defenders said, "well, if we quit collecting tolls, the state will
need to come up with that $200 million some other way." Funny part is, the
accountants opened the books and figured that staffing and maintaining the
tollbooths cost the state about 60 cents on every dollar of tolls they
collected. So the net cost to the state of shutting down the tolls would be
only $80 million.

Of course, the tollbooths remain. I feel quite certain that long after the
nuclear war with China, when the whole world devolves into a Mad Maxian
opera of barbarity, the last functioning piece of the government of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts will be running the tollbooths on the
Masspike...

-cwk.

wrote in message
news:4fK_d.12274$oa6.4378@trnddc07...
"Dude" wrote:

Still, what complete idiotic, power hungry, stupid, short sighted etc.
etc. etc. thinks user fees are a fix?

The complete idiotic, power hungry, stupid, short sighted etc. etc. etc.
administration we elected.


Oh, let's not be partisan. Can't we agree both sides have demonstrated
enough foolishness?


Then "Dude" wrote:

Let's say we want a $20 fee per flight for using the IFR system. Would
it not be
easier just to raise the fuel tax a penny or two? That would raise the
same
amount would it not?

Do you burn 2000 gallons of fuel on a typical IFR flight?

--
-Elliott Drucker

Yes, when its IMC, I mostly take Southwest. Besides, my per passenger fuel
use is similar to Southwest's, so what's the difference?

"Mike Rapoport" wrote in message
hlink.net...

"Dude" wrote in message
news


Is the "fair share" argument what this is really about? The majors
think
they are paying too much because their planes use more fuel?


Well, the majors are not a business, they're a political interest group. I
used to think that Southwest was able to profit by cherrypicking, but now
that they're the #2 carrier it's pretty hard to deny that the majors are
simply businesses with a failed model. For airline travel to evolve we need
to let Darwin play his cards and thin the herd.

Then there's the fact that the airlines write off fuel costs. And it's not
as though the only cost of an airliner is ATC. Those major metropolitan
airports cost a pretty penny to run, and then there's that little thing
called the TSA.

This unwillingness to accept simple math is not unique to
pilots, medicare recipients don't achknowlege it either. As a point of
interest, almost everyone in our society (close to 90%) is paying less
that
thier equal share of the cost of government.

Yes, which makes the left's chant that the rich "aren't paying their fair
share" deliciously ironic.

There has never been a sustained constituency for smaller government. You
can always rile up an angry mob to prevent cutting program A and another mob
for program B, but only in rare moments of crisis will people rally around a
general tightening, as with Thatcher or Reagan. Even in those cases, I would
argue it was really more of a moral issue than accounting, as with the
welfare debate. Aid to Families with Dependent Children cost in the
neighborhood of 20-30bn a year, not a major item in the federal budget.
People wanted it cut not because it cost too much, but because it corrupted
people and in turn society. Of course, no one is really talking now about
how taxing the pants off young people trying to buy their first car, house,
have a kid to buy drugs for elderly people who are as a group much sounder
financially. They paid 1980s taxes on 1980s income but will get 2010
benefits that cost 2010 money. But hey, it's only fair, right?

-cwk.

"Colin W Kingsbury" wrote in message
link.net...


Up here in Taxachusetts there's a long-standing feud over tolls on the
Massachusetts Turnpike. The law that authorized the bond issue to build the
pike said, tolls will be charged until the bonds are paid off, then the
tolls shall end. Well, the bonds were paid off more than 10 years ago, but
the tollbooths persist.

Same deal here in Florida. Florida's turnpike was paid off about a decade
ago, the promise was always that the tolls would go away when the bonds were
paid. The reality was that they instead drastically increased the tolls.

The basic lesson here is that there is no such thing as a temporary tax.

Vaughn