Let'sgoflying!
Touchdown! Greaser!
How is everyone handling the bills?
Are we just rolling over and paying these?
3000# SE piston ksat
Are we just rolling over and paying these?
3000# SE piston ksat
Vector PlanePass invoices
- Thread starter Let'sgoflying!
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I haven’t received a Vector bill….yet.
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Spot on. It's the FBO/Airport that is doing this.
Do I get miffed a bit when I get a bill? You bet. I don't like bills, I want free LOL. But Airports have to be paid for somehow. I can't argue too much against users paying for what they use vs the airport just operating from tax dollars from my neighbor who doesn't fly.
dtuuri
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I hate fees. I’d like a free hangar while you’re at it. But I pay a monthly fee for my tie down spot to help keep the lights on at the airport. And if I get charged a toll for using a highway, I can talk myself into a small landing fee. Which I’ll hate.
dtuuri
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Lol! Since we all hate fees, you would think the fees would discourage fee-incurring behavior, like landing at places where they charge them. In my neck of the woods, Cleveland's Burke Lakefront Airport is in the news again as inept city leaders look for easy ways to stem the red ink — turn it over to real estate developers and make a park out of it. Now, I ask you, who's visiting that park in the six months of the year there's no leaves on the trees because it's too cold and windy? Imo, they should be paying people to land or base there, not the other way around, and let's just see if things then turn around.
Jim_R
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As a taxpayer, I pay for a $#!+-ton of stuff that I as an individual will never use. If I had to pay a user fee at a public airport, at least I'd feel like that revenue was coming from the people most directly benefitting from its usage.
There are plenty of other ways that my money gets taken from me for reasons I don't like. For instance, my state gov't has recently rammed through a school voucher system that the majority of state residents didn't want. Now some of my tax dollars will flow to private schools which don't have to abide by the same constraints as public schools, which I'm not happy about at all. So yeah, maybe I'm not exactly "for" user fees, but in priority order of "ways my money gets taken from me that make me mad", they're pretty far down the list.
dtuuri
Final Approach
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Since I live in your state too and thought this was a curious statement, I asked Google:
AI Overview
Polls in Ohio consistently show strong, bipartisan public support for school choice and voucher programs like EdChoice, with majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents favoring them, and high support among Black and Hispanic voters; studies also suggest positive long-term academic impacts for students using vouchers, though debate continues over funding and implementation, with court challenges arising.
Back in the early 1960s when I was in high school my government teacher brought up the pros and cons about Catholic school kids' parents having to pay twice for their children's education — once to the church, and again to the government. When I was a teenager in a public school, I thought that was fair. Now, over 50 years later, I've changed my opinion. According to AI, I'm in the majority, not you.
Jim_R
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I don't live in Ohio. And my opinion is still valid regardless of whether it matches the majority or not.
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- Who you kiddin?
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The only real issue I have is if it's not being disclosed appropriately. You can go to the Vector website and get a list of their clients and you can check the airports web page to get a full list of fees. Publishing those is probably part of the deal with Vector, so that's to their credit. But, this is something that you should not have to search for beyond the Chart Supplement (or your EFB's collection of CS information). Sure, if I'm going to be parking for a while, I'll check with the FBO directly as a matter of course, but not for the odd touch & go or student cross country.
FWIW, they didn't "have" to pay twice. They decided that giving their kids an education based on religion was worth paying thousands of dollars extra per year.Back in the early 1960s when I was in high school my government teacher brought up the pros and cons about Catholic school kids' parents having to pay twice for their children's education — once to the church, and again to the government. When I was a teenager in a public school, I thought that was fair. Now, over 50 years later, I've changed my opinion. According to AI, I'm in the majority, not you.
And, for that matter, the first payment wasn't to educate 'their' kids. It was to educate all kids. Even if they had decided not to have any kids at all, they would have still paid the same amount to educate all the other kids because having an educated population is one of the most fundamentally important things to building a successful country.
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Some people really think that way. I lived in a community that was primarily Republican. So much so that when someone campaigning for a local office did a house to house, they were shocked to find a liberal
. But that same community regularly voted for property tax increases to support what was the best school district in the state.Figure out somewhere else to land, pay the bill if nowhere else makes sense. So far, it hasn't been much different than feeding a downtown parking meter for a day.
Llewtrah381
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Fees are a good way to reduce income for the surrounding community by incentivizing folks like me to go somewhere else. It’s a false gain for the community, but short sightedness in local government is certainly not new or rare.
Here's another aspect of public school vouchers that is important, yet rarely mentioned: the dollar value of the voucher is nearly always less than the per-student amount of the public school's budget. Thus every student who opts out with a voucher, actually increases the remaining funding of the public schools on a per-student basis.... Back in the early 1960s when I was in high school my government teacher brought up the pros and cons about Catholic school kids' parents having to pay twice for their children's education — once to the church, and again to the government. When I was a teenager in a public school, I thought that was fair. Now, over 50 years later, I've changed my opinion. According to AI, I'm in the majority, not you.
Fact Check: Do Voucher Programs Really Increase Public School Funding?
A Union of Professionals
www.texasaft.org
You missed the point. That article talks about total funding. Of course that goes down. My point was about per-student funding.Fact Check: Do Voucher Programs Really Increase Public School Funding?
A Union of Professionals
My point is mathematically simple and obvious. If the total budget is D dollars with S students, average per-student funding is D/S. If one student drops out and total budget is reduced by less than D/S for that student, then the new average is higher.
PS: alright, to be fair, the report does mention cases that can cause per-student funding to go down. My point refers to a student already in the public school, opting for a voucher. They mention additional factors such as students who weren't in public schools to begin with. That's true, but it's also a different comparison.
PPS: that document is written by the AFT, the Texas union of public school employees. Their perspective on vouchers is understandable.
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Reread. For example, "six of these seven states substantially reduced or froze their investment in public education on a per-student basis, adjusting for inflation"
The study was done by, Public Funds Public Schools (“PFPS”) is a national campaign to ensure that public funds for education are used to maintain,PPS: that document is written by the AFT, the Texas union of public school employees. Their perspective on vouchers is understandable.
support, and strengthen public schools. PFPS is a partnership between Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Not the teachers union. https://pfps.org/assets/uploads/SPLC_ELC_PFPS_2023Report_Final.pdf
dans2992
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You might be able to make it more difficult by using the FAA “CARES” site to restrict access to your registration info: https://cares.faa.gov/home
bonefishpete
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Landing fees is a good way to cut down airport noise. Most tax paying residents would welcome that.
Let'sgoflying!
Touchdown! Greaser!
Let'sgoflying!
Touchdown! Greaser!
Seems like government sponsored agencies including airports used to have as their mandate to provide a service.
Now they seem to be about generating revenue.
And I see so many agree with with that, I fear for the future b/c they don’t have the big picture.
Now they seem to be about generating revenue.
And I see so many agree with with that, I fear for the future b/c they don’t have the big picture.
Dana
Final Approach
Nobody likes paying landing fees and I never fly into the larger fields with landing and/or ramp fees anyway, but there are a few small fields on the shore (1B2 and 26N come to mind) that get a lot of visitors and charge landing fees; I don't object to that.
I've never gotten one, if I ever do and it's a negligible amount I'll probably just pay it and then make a note to never return to that airport.
I don't love it but IMO fees for parking overnight/ground handling aren't totally unreasonable. Fees for simply doing a touch and go would definitely rub me the wrong way though. I've said this before and will say it again- if they're going to charge these fees there should be a standardized system where anyone using ForeFlight or similar EFBs can easily look it up.
I don't love it but IMO fees for parking overnight/ground handling aren't totally unreasonable. Fees for simply doing a touch and go would definitely rub me the wrong way though. I've said this before and will say it again- if they're going to charge these fees there should be a standardized system where anyone using ForeFlight or similar EFBs can easily look it up.
Jim_R
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I doubt that user fees at airports are fully replacing taxes paid by the entire population. Similarly, there are user fees for roads in addition to the general taxes paid by the whole population, in the form of gasoline taxes, EV registration fees, tolls, etc.
Llewtrah381
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National parks are government sponsored agencies and they also charge fees for the direct user.
Llewtrah381
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“I pay taxes so I should get every government service for free.
Oh - and don’t raise my taxes. In fact, lower them: they’re too high”
Oh - and don’t raise my taxes. In fact, lower them: they’re too high”
IMHO the beef people have with vector is justified.
1. Using a system that was developed for safety, as a pathway to billing is a legitimate complaint. They dont pay into the system but use it to their advantage.
2. The argument that they are simply collecting the airports fees the airport would otherwise collect is dubious. Their are many airports that had no fees that got into bed with vector simply because it was a free service for them that makes it easy to begin collecting fees. Public airports get subsidies from the FAA, if they dont generate enough, then they should raise the rents FBO's pay that also charge pilots ramp fees. Not charge pilots landing fees on top of it.
3. Vector makes mistakes and I don't feel like having to call them and dispute a charge when I was IFR and 3000 AGL over an airport but got hit with a fee anyway.
4. Price transparency - When FBO and Landing fees were rare, it was one thing. But now more airports than ever is charging light planes fees and that information has to be centralized. Lets do it one step at a time, lets just do the landing fees. When is vector going to disclose where they are operating? It should be like medical care, no surprise bills.
1. Using a system that was developed for safety, as a pathway to billing is a legitimate complaint. They dont pay into the system but use it to their advantage.
2. The argument that they are simply collecting the airports fees the airport would otherwise collect is dubious. Their are many airports that had no fees that got into bed with vector simply because it was a free service for them that makes it easy to begin collecting fees. Public airports get subsidies from the FAA, if they dont generate enough, then they should raise the rents FBO's pay that also charge pilots ramp fees. Not charge pilots landing fees on top of it.
3. Vector makes mistakes and I don't feel like having to call them and dispute a charge when I was IFR and 3000 AGL over an airport but got hit with a fee anyway.
4. Price transparency - When FBO and Landing fees were rare, it was one thing. But now more airports than ever is charging light planes fees and that information has to be centralized. Lets do it one step at a time, lets just do the landing fees. When is vector going to disclose where they are operating? It should be like medical care, no surprise bills.
Let'sgoflying!
Touchdown! Greaser!
I know, good example.
They have a huge problem with excess traffic however and some of them are using fees to reduce it.
Some say only the wealthy can use certain parks b/c of this, I haven’t followed it but there is something sad about that.
4CornerFlyer
Line Up and Wait
One correction: 26N Ocean City NJ does not have landing fees. They do have a parking fee which applies if you leave the airport, currently $15 per day.
Jon
The NPS’ highest admission fee is $35/vehicle. An annual American The Beautiful Pass which provides access to all national parks (and more) is $80.
Entrance Fees by Park (U.S. National Park Service)
Learn which national parks charge fees and how much it costs at each park.
A few parks do limit traffic thru required entrance reservations however there is no additional fee for the reservation.
Dana
Final Approach
Oops, you're right, of course. Same with Katama, I think.
We’re already paying plenty of landing and ramp fees, with the federal tax charged with every gallon of aviation fuel purchased. Where is all that money going? It’s supposed to be returned to airports. Is any being “filtered” off for other purposes? If the tax program is being run efficiently, then add a penny a gallon, and give the airports the money they need. If airports continue to use fees, then reduce the fuel tax, so aviators can save money at the pump, to pay the fees. Seems fairly simple.
