Schumer: ‘A Gun Held’ To Our Heads by GOP Over FAA Funding

Harry Reid won't allow the bill passed by the House through because it reduces subsides for a few airports in Nevada now at a tune of $3700+ per passenger to $1000 per passenger. So unreasonable!

It also prevents a "card check" system, of getting a handful of employees into a secret meeting to vote for unionizing and instead maintains the status quo of requiring a majority of all employees to vote for unionizing. THAT is fairness.

FOR THE RECORD, I am an EAS PROPONENT, it’s an important tool for small community economic development.

That said, BILL CLINTON destroyed Regional Aviation in the mid-90’s with his “Aviation Safety” Law that made flying small aircraft to these smaller cities WILDLY unprofitable.

His “These new rules will only cost PENNIES per passenger to implement!” cost upwards of $100+ per passenger in real life, and everybody in the Industry knew it.

Now we have a situation where NO American Aircraft Corporation builds Regional/Commuter Aircraft anymore, the ones still in the fleet are at the end of their useful life cycles, and the Regulations have made them utterly unprofitable to fly, (as Delta so clearly demonstrated last week by announcing the dropping of the SAAB fleet, and pulling out of as many as 24 small market towns, many EAS-Subsidized), and that even with a $200 max subsidy PER PASSENGER, many of these cities can’t be made profitable.

Bottom line:

As important as Air Service is to smaller remote cities, Government Regulation has made it totally unprofitable to operate without HUGE subsidies, and that has become impractical in the current environment.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.