Funding the FAA

I wrote in my column today that the move to send the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Air Traffic Controllers Association back to the bargaining table with the addition of mediators could make it easier to pass legislation reauthorizing the agency. Now, Doug Elmendorf is writing on the Congressional Budget Office's Director's Blog, giving details of how the administration's position on funding systems is shaping up. To me, this sounds like a preference for a user fees system:

Most of the taxes are linked closely to the number of passengers and the fares they pay--not to the number of aircraft operations. But the cost of the air traffic control system and the amount of congestion in the system is driven largely by the number, timing, and location of aircraft operations. For example, over the past several years, the number of aircraft departures has grown much more rapidly than the number of passengers--because air carriers have tended to substitute higher frequency service with smaller aircraft for less frequent service with larger aircraft.

Finding a way to allocate costs that accurately reflects the impact that various kinds of users have on the aviation system is a real analytical and political challenge, but a better alignment of taxes with costs could help reduce congestion and delays.