Thank you for helping Musk and Taylor Swift fly

| May 6, 2023

 

We’re all familiar with the hypocrisy of the socially conscious elites –  remember the gathering at Davos when the airport was clogged with the private jets of the ultra-rich like Bill Gates and Al Gore who whine about carbon emissions and then  fly in to chastise us..

just four hours of flying on a private jet produces more emissions than the average person living in the EU emits each year.

But they are trying to do the right thing by getting us to reduce our emissions, right?  They are fighting the good fight on our behalf, right? Think we’ve all given up on expecting them to not live by double standards. Elon Musk tops the list of private-jet users, flying almost every other day. Taylor Swift seems to be one of the top users, too. Ah, but the good news: We’re helping PAY for this.

The Federal Aviation Administration, airports, and other flight infrastructure are financed by what’s called the Airport & Airway Trust Fund. If you’ve ever bought a plane ticket in the U.S., you’ve helped fund this pot of cash, which stood at $14.80 billion at the end of 2021. Customers pay a fee equivalent to 7.5% of their fare with each ticket, as well as a small passenger facility charge to help with airport infrastructure. As the prices of airline tickets have risen in recent years, thanks to factors like oil prices and inflation, so, too, has that surcharge.

One would think that private flights would be subject to similar fees to help fund the FAA. After all, one out of every six flights the FAA handles are private flights; they’re a significant chunk of what the agency does all day. But, infuriatingly, those private flights are not subject to the same fees that your ticket is—private planes just pay a surcharge on oil, which comes out to about 22 cents per gallon of fuel. Overall, according to the report, private flights end up funding just 2% of the FAA’s trust fund.

There are thousands of airports across the country, most partially or fully funded by taxpayers, many of them solely catering to private flights.

This isn’t just a story about the ills of capitalism—it’s also a climate story. The number of people electing to take private jets is ballooning. In Europe, the number of private flights increased threefold between 2020 and 2021, while associated emissions quadrupled; the amount of private flights in the U.S. has doubled since the pandemic. Private arrivals and departures have also begun to fill the gap at smaller airports where public service has been cut back or canceled.

Gizmodo

The article suggest banning private jets… seems a bit extreme to me. And I know the majority of private flights are on private light non-jet aircraft. Private jets? We are talking toys of the extremely wealthy – one would think the least they could do is pay the same kind of fees and taxes the low-lifes like us pay. Too, that’s probably as unrealistic as making them pay equivalent Social Security or income taxes as we do.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Blue Skies, Government Incompetence

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5JC

John Kerry sold his private jet this year. Al Gore, Bill Gates and Elon Musk purchase Carbon offsets. The way carbon offsets work, It seems to be a bunch of bullshit to me. The hypocritical part was that John Kerry was the one running around pimping carbon offsets but not buying any.

The article seems to be conflating two very different issues. Climate change hypocrisy versus supporting small airports through taxes on airline flights. Many small airports, especially those in remote rural areas, would close without the tax. The airports that are used almost exclusively by the rich would of course stay open.

Since no fares are collected on most small private flights I’m not sure what the solution would be here.

Skivvy Stacker

I kinda look at “Carbon Offsets” as a payment you make so you can keep pumping carbon into the atmosphere, while keeping the Climate Change assclowns off your back.

jeff LPH 3 63-66

taylor shit a real demorat A-hole.

rgr769

As a former private pilot, I can confirm that there are many, many more airports in this country that serve only private aircraft. Most of those airports have facilities, such as instrument approach systems, that were financed and are maintained by FAA money. Moreover, most airports that serve commercial aircraft have a side reserved for private aircraft. For example, SLC’s international airport has an entire side of the airport that serves only general aviation (privately owned aircraft). Thus, you have most of general aviation that doesn’t pay its fair share for the cost of the airport facilities it uses. As a private pilot, you can fly into any airport and park your aircraft for one, two or more days in transient parking and take off without spending a nickel, if you don’t buy fuel there. I’ve done this for up to a week, when visiting relatives. We all did use the restrooms in the terminal, though. And I received a weather briefing (for free) from the FAA office.

Skivvy Stacker

I suggest a lottery.
Everyone who flies on a private jet that is going to a meeting on Global Climate Change is automatically registered as a practice target for SAM, and Arial Missile attacks, to be selected at random by the Air Forces of the country of origin, or arrival.
In order to make it interesting, each private jet will be made aware of this before takeoff.