19. Department of Transportation · Minor · Needs Congress
Impose user fees on unconventional airspace users
Printed page 634 19. Department of Transportation
“Shorter-term reforms could include implementing user fees for unconventional airspace users (for example, advanced air mobility, space launch, and recovery) and giving the ATO a deadline after which it could not authorize or fund any more nondigital/remote control towers.”
What has happened
- Partially done
Congress enacted a user fee on one of the two categories of unconventional airspace user the Quote names. Section 40004 of P.L. 119-21 adds 51 U.S.C. 50924, imposing a fee on each launch or reentry carried out under an FAA license or permit from 2026, at $0.25 per pound of payload rising to $1.50 by 2033 and indexed thereafter, subject to an annual per-launch cap, and deposits it in a dedicated account. Nothing comparable was enacted or proposed for advanced air mobility operations, and the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program charges no fee.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- partial under the two-object rule in playbook section 3b: the Quote names advanced air mobility and space launch and recovery, and one of them was delivered by statute. The fee is paid into a Treasury account rather than to the Air Traffic Organization, which is why #1741, whose Quote requires payment to the ATO, stays not started on the same section.
- Read the enacted text at https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-119publ21/html/PLAW-119publ21.htm , sec. 40004.
- Action
- create
- Object
- User fees for unconventional airspace users
- ID
- 1743