Iowans Support Their Small Airports

On June 4 the Des Moines Register published an article whose headline said “Tiny Iowa Airports Take Off With Millions in FAA Grants.” To be honest, it’s what you’d expect from a newspaper and reporter whose aviation experience doesn’t extend much past his last airline flight.

The gist of this “analysis” is this: “Airports across the state have received more than $76.6 million in airport improvement grants since 2007 — about 42 percent of which has gone to small airports without commercial airline service that process fewer than 50 takeoffs and landings per day….”

With clearly no clue about the aviation trust fund, who pays into it, and how the airport improvement program works, this analysis comes “at a time when Congress is debating whether the tax structure that funds most Federal Aviation Administration programs should be changed to shift more of the burden to owners and operators of small aircraft.”

To keep the story “objective,” the reporter notes an upcoming Iowa DOT report that says the states’s GA airports feed $187 million to the states economy, and quotes NBAA’s Ed Bolen, who said, “If all the business flying in the United States went away, you would still need these airports.” And then the reporter got back to his main point:

“How much public money should be used to support infrastructure that much of the general public does not use?” and “Critics, including the airline industry, have argued that commercial passengers have paid billions for upgrades to small airports that they will probably never patronize.”

Like I said, pretty much what you’d expect from a newspaper and reporter with no real aviation knowledge. No surprises here. The surprise came in the online comments submitted by readers–55 of them in one day, and only about a dozen of them from aviators! The rest came from citizens whose words reveal no aviation connection.

There were maybe a half dozen comments in support of the article, until the other readers set the story straight by explaining how the aviation trust fund and AIP work, turning critics into small airport supporters. And one commenter had an unusual–and accurate–point in support of GA airports: “The small town airports do have appeal. NO crowds, no crabby ticket agents. I think we need to have the small airports.”

And we will, because such online conversations such as this one let everyone get in the discussion, creating a louder, more diverse voice in fighting for the future of general aviation. — Scott Spangler