The fact of the matter is that commercial airlines are responsible for creating the vast majority of the cost of our air traffic control system – costs they now want the small guys to pay for. It is the larger commercial jets, whose hectic schedules crowd thousands of flights through a limited number of national airports every day, that cause the huge bottlenecks that drive the skyrocketing cost of air traffic control in the U.S. If all general aviation planes were grounded tomorrow, the savings in air traffic control personnel and equipment would be minimal. 

 

 

The commercial airlines and their Washington lobbyists now want the public to believe that the costs of providing air traffic control to a 4-passenger turboprop and a 400 passenger 747 are the same. Nothing could be further from the truth.   This argument is just a slick attempt by the airlines and their lobbyists to try to push through a huge tax break that would be shouldered by small business and pave the way toward privatizing the air traffic control system and shifting it away from Congressional oversight.