Other Unfinished Business
The Seattle Times reports FAA shutdown gives airline-ticket buyers a break on taxes
The federal government has left the FAA in limbo — and that will save buyers of airline tickets some money since they won’t have to pay federal taxes on tickets.
Starting Friday at midnight, airlines will not have the authority to collect federal excise ticket taxes since Congress adjourned Friday without approving an FAA funding measure.
Major functions of the Federal Aviation Administration are funded directly by users in the form of excise taxes on tickets. If the taxes aren’t collected, the functions have to be stopped, and employees involved furloughed. There is no way of making up the lost revenues, so the furloughed workers will not be receiving any compensation until the problem is corrected.
Airline passengers should be happy at the cost reduction … until it is no longer safe to fly.
4 comments
Seriously? This is getting way past ridiculous!
This has been going on for years, as the GOP wants to stop Federal employees from joining unions, and to eliminate subsidies for rural airports, so they attach amendments to the funding bills
The Senate doesn’t want to go along, so nothing gets done.
Note: that air traffic control and TSA aren’t affected, but upgrades to the system and administration are directly affected at this point, and contracts that are affected will get more expensive.
Amongst other things stopped: pilot ratings. So when those airline pilots need to be re-cert’ed, uhm… err… no FAA? No certification. No certification? No fly. Yeah, sounds like a plan — if you’re a flightless waterfowl, anyhow.
– Badtux the Flightless Penguin
The Air Force arranged to get my medical records to Hawaii from Alaska while I was deployed because I was due for a flight physical and if I missed it, would be grounded. The rules about flying are taken very seriously, and you’re right – no check ride and you are grounded.
People are really going to enjoy all the construction that gets stopped and has to be re-started, which means an expensive ‘change order’.