The taxing has to stop
I'm a little late on this one, so forgive me, but last week The Travel Insider had a link to an Associated Press story that ran on Yahoo (how's that for sourcing?) that made my jaw drop. I was flying to Raleigh-Durham when I read it, which is sort of appropriate...
Basically, the story (by Bob Porterfield) was about how airline passengers pay an extraordinary amount in taxes, much of which goes to small airports that serve only corporate and other private jets. Get this: "The main source of federal funding for small airports and airstrips is the Airline Improvement Program, which has distributed $7.1 billion to airports of all sizes since 2005. About $2.2 billion of that went to small airports with little or no passenger service.... [And] most of that money was collected from commercial airline passengers." The FAA, to its credit, is trying to replace these outrageous taxes we pay with taxes based on fuel and airport usage, which would spread the burden around a bit. Naturally, the corporate-jet industry is fighting it. Kudos to Bob Porterfield.