Comment by ryandrake
3 months ago
Careless and hamfisted taxing/banning of "private jets" can have the unintended effect of also killing light piston general aviation, flight instruction, and the whole pipeline of training the next generation of airline pilots. Flight training is almost always low capacity (one-on-one) so uncarefuly-crafted legislation could catch it in the blast radius. Piloting is already one of the more expensive careers to train for.
You can make taxes specific, as in literally saying "a tax on non-commercially operated non-propeller driven aircraft with greater than 8 passenger seats".
The prop exemption alone would clear most gen-av, but this kind of ruleset would also be very easy for the richies to bypass/game.
You could use max gross weight and/or number of seats > 6. Not a lot of flight training or hobbyist flying going on in Beechcraft 18s or Cessna 402s. And people who like private jets aren't going to step down to a 6 seater.
Newsflash: "planes are rich people's toys" has been killing general aviation already for a generation if not two.
The rising costs have made that much more true, though. My step-dad had a gorgeous 1940s Luscombe that he paid ~35k for in the 90s. He lived in an airpark where he paid 280k for a nice 3br house with a hangar.
Good luck trying to replicate that now.
Having 85k of purely discretionary income (adjusting for inflation) is still pretty "rich people toy". That's about 105% median household income.
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Landing fees already have this built into the structure, along with waived fees for fuel purchases, etc.
It probably is reasonable to look at occupancy percentage along with engine type, and adjust landing fees based on that. Two out of 18 souls on board with a turbine? High landing fees, divert some to an ATC fund.
> Two out of 18 souls on board with a turbine?
Very common. How do you think pilots train to fly such aircraft? Would you prefer pilots not to be trained, or for this type of aircraft to cease service?
I would expect them to do the bulk of their training flights out of airports with minimal congestion and lower landing fees.
They don’t have to be trained in class B airspace to get their type rating.