President Barack Obama wants to update the nation's air travel infrastructure. Yesterday, upon releasing his FY2016 budget proposal, he revealed his plan for doing it: Raise the airport user fee levied on travelers when they purchase an airline ticket, then use the proceeds to fund improvements to airports, runways, and baggage systems.
In spite of the increased cost to travelers -- which would be $8 per enplanement, up from $4.50 currently -- the travel industry applauded the suggestion.
"The travel community strongly supports the Obama Administration's efforts to modernize our failing air travel infrastructure through a long-overdue adjustment in the user fee funding mechanism known as the Passenger Facility Charge," U.S. Travel Association President and CEO Roger Dow said in a statement. "The PFC is really an ideal fiscal instrument, because it is rigorously designed in such a way that 100 percent of the funds it raises pay for projects that materially benefit travelers. Congress cannot raid it for unrelated programs, and airports are prevented from spending it on anything but the most relevant infrastructure priorities. Rather than publicly fretting about infrastructure problems without offering any real solutions, it is time for Washington to embrace the PFC as the fairest and most efficient means to fund these projects -- and do so before U.S. airports fall even further behind the rest of the world and return to recent years when we saw our global market share decline."
The president's budget proposal is only the first of many steps toward funding the federal government in FY2016. The Republican-controlled House and Senate will now review the president's proposals and counter with their own plans this spring.
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