"Air ticket taxes flow to airports used mainly by private planes"

["Stephen Irwin" <stepheni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sunday, April 15, 2007 

Air ticket taxes flow to airports used mainly by private planes
By BEN DOBBIN
The Associated Press


PAINTED POST, N.Y. -- The little airport that Joe Costa built after World
War II is still a hassle-free stop-off for privately owned propellor planes
whizzing in and out of the hill-framed Cohocton Valley. 

Corning-Painted Post Airport is also sprouting wings under six years of
public ownership since Costa died in 1998: The 3,270-foot runway has been
paved, a taxiway is being built and the fenced perimeter pushed out,
tripling the size of the old 17-acre grass airstrip at a cost of
$20,000-plus per acre. 

So far, $5.8 million in government grants have been spent and $3.2 million
more will be allotted by 2010. In return, the airport's economic value to
this rural western New York region dotted with small towns and anchored by
Corning, a city of 11,000 people a few miles away, will double to an
estimated $2 million a year. 

"You invest $9 million and you get it all back in nine years, and then after
that everything is gravy," said the Town of Erwin's manager, Rita McCarthy,
citing a 2002 economic analysis. "That's a good payback." 

The federal government handed out $2.3 billion over the last two years to
hundreds of small airports and airstrips that see little or no commercial
airline traffic. Congress will decide later this year whether to curtail
this subsidy, which is used for improvements such as runways, lighting and
fences. 

The main source of funding for so-called "general aviation" airports _
ranging from remote airfields serving crop-dusters and hobbyists to
"executive" airports handling corporate jets and exclusive resort
destinations _ is the federal Airport Improvement Program. 

It distributed $72.6 million to 56 small airports in New York state in 2005
and 2006, and most of that money was collected in surcharges from airline
passengers, an Associated Press review has found. 

The grants ranged from $12 million to outfit Plattsburgh International
Airport with better runways, a new terminal and advanced landing system, to
$230,241 to enable Buffalo-Lancaster Airport to extend its 3,200-foot runway
to 5,500 feet by 2009, accommodate small jets and ease congestion at nearby
Buffalo Niagara International Airport. 

The Federal Aviation Administration is proposing that many existing
passenger taxes be scrapped and replaced with higher fuel taxes and user
fees that would put more of the burden on general aviation. Pilots' groups
and airport managers are among those fighting to keep the subsidies intact. 

The airport in Painted Post has almost doubled its takeoffs and landings to
more than 25,000 annually since it paved the runway in 2005 and began
operating year-round, said the late founder's son, also named Joe Costa. 

Costa, 65, who sold the airport land for $365,000 in 2001, is the sole
commercial tenant: He gives flying lessons, tows "Will you marry me?"
banners and offers scenic tours of Niagara Falls, the Finger Lakes and other
tourist attractions aboard Costa Flying Service, a four-Cessna fleet his
father launched in 1930. 

More air traffic brings more parking, fuel, restaurant and other revenues
"and that's putting more tax in the state coffers and so forth," said Costa,
who also employs four mechanics fixing and restoring small aircraft. But
he's unsure how his father would feel about his beloved domain being
transformed. 

"I don't know if he would be patting me on the back or kicking me," he said.
"This was his little corner of the world. Yes, he could get federal help but
he didn't want it. He was anti-government." 

Among the airport's regular users are businesspeople headed to Corning Inc.
and Dresser-Rand, an Ohio construction company president overseeing a $130
million highway-interchange project, and two pilots who ferry ailing
patients to Pittsburgh at all hours for emergency organ-transplant surgery. 

"Anybody who flies is trying to compress time, trying to get the most out of
a day as they possibly can," Costa said, standing in the tiny terminal
building equipped with three chairs and a frayed leather sofa. 

But most owners of the 32 planes based here fly for pleasure _ and quickly
become adept at handling swirling air currents created by the surrounding
pine-topped ridges. 

Dick Vockroth, a retired engineer who learned to fly here in 1963 for $9 an
hour, bought a secondhand Cessna Skylane for $40,000 in 1985 and has flown
into more than 230 airports. He might spend about $200 in fuel to fly with
his wife, Betty, to Myrtle Beach, S.C., in four hours. 

"Every time we fly, we're paying into the system," said Vockroth, 75, who
takes to the skies practically any time he chooses. "It costs me $2 a minute
to fly. It's expensive but I'm addicted by now. How is anybody else
subsidizing our flying? I think it's the other way."

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