LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic Universe-Document

LEXIS-NEXIS® Academic

March 17, 2000, Friday SUNRISE EDITION

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 644 words

HEADLINE: Air Justice

BYLINE: 5

BODY:
The U.S. House of Representatives' overwhelming passage of a bill to spend $ 40 billion over three years for air-travel improvement is good for airports in general and good for airports in Nebraska and Iowa in particular. It also addresses a point of fundamental fairness.

For years Congress has bottled up money from the Aviation Trust Fund, which takes in about $ 10 billion a year in user fees. The central purpose of the fund has been to finance airport improvements and maintenance, and in theory it was earmarked for that. But the money was left unspent as a piece of fiscal sleight-of-hand meant to make federal deficits appear smaller. For Rep. Bud Shuster, R-Pa., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, it became almost a moral crusade to get the fund separated from the general budget, with its revenues to be used solely for airport projects. After years of impasse, the Senate agreed that, without actually separating the funds, spending on airports each year will equal or exceed the fund's revenues and interest.

That looks like a distinction without a difference, but so be it. That's politics. The cork is out of the bottle. At bottom, this was made possible by two factors: (1) The federal government, at least by some accounting methods, is now running surpluses, not deficits. (2) It's an election year - the House passed the measure by better than 3-to-1.

The legislation also raised the cap on airport-imposed passenger fees, from $ 3 to $ 4.50. This is mostly to the good, since local airports commonly use them for improvements to benefit those same passengers. For the record, that $ 1.50 increase is going to look like $ 6 on a lot of airline tickets.

That's because on a round-trip ticket, the fee gets you literally coming and going, and it can be imposed for a maximum of two segments on each flight. Thus, a passenger flying, say, from Omaha to Orlando with a stop in St. Louis and returning could rack up four of those $ 1.50 increases. (That's up to the individual airports, but it's hard to imagine many of them forgoing the revenue.)

A dozen airports in Nebraska and Iowa, with Omaha's Eppley Airfield leading the way, will get their federal entitlements doubled over each of the next three years. For Eppley, this means more than $ 7 million for construction that wasn't there before - just what is needed by an airport whose passenger boardings are expected to double in the next 11 years.

Some other aspects of the bill are equally welcome.

Of prime concern, modernizing the nation's decrepit air traffic control system will get a substantial boost, nearly $ 1 billion per year. In addition, there are provisions to help airlines buy so-called "regional" jets, provided they use them to serve small airports. There are funds to help improve the training of airport security checkpoint personnel, as well as money to put emergency locator devices on smaller jets.

The measure also mandates collision-avoidance systems for cargo planes, adds protections for whistleblowers on safety-related issues, and increases penalties against unruly passengers.

Some critics say that by allowing more flights into some major airports, the bill will increase congestion and compromise safety. But the improved air-traffic handling system should largely address such concerns. And, realistically, it is hard to know how Congress could have put this off much longer in good conscience. By one FAA projection, during the next 11 years the number of large passenger jets needing access to the skies and gate space at airports is expected to grow by half.

It took too long, but justice has been done. In a practical sense, the money in the Aviation Trust Fund has belonged to air passengers all along. At last, they'll see it coming back.

LOAD-DATE: March 17, 2000