CHAPTER XII - Relation of Airport Investment to Annual User Charges

Abstract

This chapter presents an approach for rate-setting of annual user charge airports and outlines the magnitude of the discrepancy between total costs of a typical airport and the cost of the lesser facilities actually needed and used for personal flying. As a first step toward determining what proportionate capital costs of a large municipal airport should be segregated as a basis for user charges upon fixed-base operations, it appears necessary to delineate the size and nature of the area and facilities needed to serve personal flying. A sampling of what private enterprise under good management provides at adequate privately established fields is presumed to indicate the needs of personal flying. The resultant needs in terms of landing, storage, and servicing area is then applied to the larger airport to outline the proportion of that facility which would have been built if filling the needs of personal flying alone had been initially the sole objective. Available evidence indicates that only a small portion of the landing area facilities provided on a typical DLA airport is needed for personal flying. Therefore, only a small portion of the total annual costs of such an airport can be properly allocated to fixed-base operations and recovered in annual users' charges paid by such operations.