NBAA President Ed Bolen said Feb. 3 the threat of aviation user fees seems to be dead “at least for this term of Congress,” and that FAA’s reauthorization bill could advance within the next “four to eight weeks.”

That the Obama Administration’s 2011 budget proposal, issued Monday, contained no mention of user fees to help fund the FAA was a “milestone” event, Bolen told Aviation Week. That omission marked the culmination of a series of attacks, counterattacks, campaigns and hearings beginning in March 2006 when the airlines announced their intentions to push $2 billion in federal taxes on to business aviation, and to assume greater control of the air traffic control system.

“A lot of people expected the airlines to just run over the general aviation community,” Bolen said, “but our community responded and responded well” in foiling the carriers’ plans.

Although the Obama Administration had hinted it might pick up the user fee concept, put forward again and again by the Bush Administration, Bolen believes a letter sent to the White House and signed by over 100 members of Congress helped to cool the idea.

“The House sending a letter to the administration with over a quarter of the members putting them names on it and saying, ‘Do not send us a user fee proposal because it will be dead on arrival’ -- that was a very significant event,” Bolen said.

With business and general aviation, along with the airlines united behind the need for NextGen implementation, Bolen thinks the FAA Reauthorization bill – already passed by the House, but now stalled in the Senate Finance Committee – could get priority treatment since, among other things, it is regarded as jobs creator since it provides for investments in infrastructure and technology.

While “it’s important to recognize successes,” Bolen cautioned that the user fee concept has been promoted by adminstrations going back to the Eisenhower years, and thus would likely return at some point. “In Washington, it’s really hard to kill a bad idea,” he said, “and user fees are a very bad idea.”

Under the 2011 budget proposal, NextGen technology would see a 32 percent funding increase while the FAA would get an additional $14 million to hire 82 new inspectors and safety technicians. The Alliance for Aviation Across America noted that both the Government Accountability Office and the DOT Inspector General have testified to Congress that “the current aviation tax structure is forecasted to raise enough revenue to cover the FAA’s anticipated modernization cost.”

Meanwhile, Bolen and leaders of three other general aviation organizations caucused this week to plot their future courses of action beyond Washington to the nation at large.

AOPA’s Craig Fuller said of the year ahead, his organization’s focus “will be on efforts throughout the rest of the country. This year, we will be holding events around the country telling our members that if they care about GA, they must get engaged.”

GAMA’s Pete Bunce praised the Obama administration for including an extension of bonus depreciation for general aviation aircraft purchases and said his association’s goals for 2010 include working with Congress to speed up NextGen equipage through incentives for users.

And NATA’s James Coyne said AOPA, GAMA, NBAA, and NATA members have to get more active in GA issues because “authority is going back to the grassroots, and our memberships are more important than ever before.”

Photo credit: Miami-Dade Dept. of Aviation