FAA's burden per pilot: $22,600/pilot/year
The FAA presents an enormous fiscal burden to aviation ? as revealed below. Consider the following metrics, based on data from the FAA itself:
The 2006 fiscal year budget request for the FAA was $13.78 billion [1]. Of that, $9.746 billion was for "safety" operations [1].
In 2005 there were 609,737 active airmen certificates [2]. Dividing the FAA budget by the number of airmen yields rather astounding values for the per-pilot burden:
$15,984/pilot/year for "safety" operations, or
$22,600/pilot/year for all FAA operations.
Let's look at the FAA budget burden another way. In 2005 there were 224,352 active general aviation aircraft [3] and at least 6810 air carrier aircraft [4]. This yields the following FAA burden for each aircraft:
$42,161/aircraft/year for "safety" operations, or
$59,611/aircraft/year for all FAA operations.
Another way to divide the FAA budget is on a per flight hour basis. There were 26,982,383 GA flight hours in 2005 [3] and 18,606,824 air carrier revenue flight hours for the 12 months ended October 2005 [5]. This yields at least 45,589,207 flight hours, with some fraction outside controlled airspace. Even if all those flight hours had been within ATC, the cost per flight hour burden is still alarmingly high:
$214/flight hour/year for "safety" operations, or
$302/flight hour/year for all FAA operatons.
Another way to normalize the FAA budget is to compare the approximate number of controller-hours with the approximate number of flight hours. In 2006 there were about 14,618 FAA controllers [6]. If one assumes a 35 hour work week and 48 weeks per year for each controller, then one gets 24,558,240 total controller hours. Dividing the 45,589,207 flight hours by controller hours yields about 1.86 flight hours per controller hour. It is as if each flight had to share the burden of half a controller with one other flight. But there are in fact 44,865 people employed by the FAA [6] so the burden is even worse.
There are other metrics by which one may judge fiscal effectiveness of the FAA, such as number of ATC handled landing and takeoff operations, or by number of public or private use airports, and so on, and all are equally depressing. The objective here is simply to draw attention to a federal system that is fiscally flawed.
It seems therefore not only premature to posit "user fees," it is beside the point. Since the government excludes itself from market force influences by its monopoly of police force, the imposition of "user fees" impacts only ATC demand side, but does nothing to control an inefficient or technologically backward ATC supply side. Only if the ATC system is made responsive to market forces and decoupled from political manipulation would it be reasonable and fair to posit payment for actual usage. It would be a sad day indeed were a pilot flying from one private airstrip through class G airspace to another private airstrip forced to pay $300/hour via gas tax and/or usage fees (for using no ATC or FAA services at all) in order to subsidize air carriers traveling through class A airspace or otherwise perpetuate an inefficient traffic control system.
That said, why the heck is it costing the FAA vastly more than $200 per flight hour to "control" each flight? If the FAA applies user fees proportionate to actual usage, I expect GA could adapt. But the FAA is a government entity and if usage of its service drops, it is very unlikely that its budget would be decreased to match. Instead the burden would be increased on those still forced to use the services. Since air carriers would most likely be the ones in most need of FAA ATC services, they would use their political clout to force even non-users to pay into the system.
[1]
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/aba/budgets_brief/media/bib2006.pdf
[2]
http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/...ivil_airmen_statistics/2005/media/air1-05.xls
[3]
http://www.faa.gov/data_statistics/.../general_aviation/CY2005/media/FAA_2005_1.pdf
[4]
http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_information/airframe_cost_report
[5]
http://www.bts.gov/xml/air_traffic/src/index.xml#TwelveMonthsSystem
[6]
http://www.faa.gov/about/plans_reports/media/Combined_FY_2006_FAA_PAR_Final_v6_12-14-2006.pdf