When Americans Fly Economy, They're Actually Paying for Someone Else to Fly Private

How is this fundamentally different from the “my kids don’t go to school so I shouldn’t have to pay property taxes” people? Relax it’s a public good, the FAA. Everyone benefits from a public good.

The fundamental difference is the direction of the redistribution.
The capitalist system inherently distributes from poor to rich. With no state involved, a capitalist system strictly and always devolves into one person (or a very small group) owning everything and everyone else being owned by them. That's why we have states that do have redistribution systems that try to counteract that: We have progressive tax systems that tax the rich more than the poor to fund free (or at least subsidized) public good systems.
To get back to your example: The rich don't need free schools. Even without free public education, they would still be able to afford to send their kids to expensive private schools. A free school program is there to mostly benefit the poor.
Redistribution systems that redistribute from poor to rich on the other hand are inherently broken. The base economic system already does that redistribution from poor to rich, so allowing the rich to mooch even more off the system is not a good idea.
- Keep in mind that as soon as the FAA becomes funded by billionaires their primary responsibility is to the billionaire instead of the flying public. Much in the way that the police are employed by the rich and could give fuck-all about ordinary citizens.

Stop vertical video syndrome.

I knew we'd lost the Internet when they started shitting on people who corrected spelling and grammar. Sure, let's all just agree to remain ignorant.
I'd agree with you but that train (or plane, if you will) has left the station years ago.
Let it go, man, let it go....
People that like vertical videos have no breadth of perception and a narrow view. Think about that.
(This is to be taken non-serious.)
I'm afraid that fight is lost 😞
Old man screams at clouds
Most people watch videos on a phone where the vertical format is more convenient.
- When I watch videos on my phone, I rotate my phone so the videos are oriented in the best way for videos to be oriented.
  Not only are vertical videos trash, they often come packages with modified players that are equally trash. Thankfully (for now at least) you can fix YouTube by switching /shorts/ to /watch/ in the URL.
- Except you can turn your phone. I'm not rotating my monitor or my laptop.

Most common route is atlanta to orlando

Why isn't there high speed rail ????? The distance is only 700km ( 440 miles ) a french TGV can easily go over 300 km/h ( 185 mph ) so a direct line would at most be 2h30, given a plane boarding time it's very competitive, conveninent and at a fraction of the operating cost.

High speed rail has a massive stigma in the US as hundreds of billions have been spent on failed rail projects (embezzled or just abandoned mostly) and 99% of us have never even seen it in existence. It's like a myth scam sold to us by snake oil salesmen.
Sure, if we fund it again it will really happen this time.
- Also based on an experience I had at work with a visiting American who point blank refused to get the tram, there seems to be a vicious cycle where public transport is seen as unsafe because only poor people get it, and only poor people get it because it's seen as unsafe.
Because of the air industry (and car industry) lobbies.
- Pretty much the hidden plot for who framed Roger rabbit
"The Okefenokee Swamp is a shallow, 438,000-acre (177,000 ha), peat-filled wetland straddling the Georgia–Florida line in the United States. A majority of the swamp is protected by the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and the Okefenokee Wilderness. The Okefenokee Swamp is considered to be one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Georgia and is the largest "blackwater" swamp in North America." -Wikipedia
Add to this Indian Reservation land, National Park/Preserve/ Wildlife Refuge land, the Everglades, other swamp/marshland, etc and you start to see that there's several environmental challenges to a rail system from Georgia to Orlando Florida.
- According to gmaps there is a 4 lane highway between atlanta and orlando, I'm pretty sure you can squeeze train tracks there.
- If the government or the billionaires really wanted to they’d just do it and fuck the Indians on repeat like every other time, it’s just a talking point and it’s not going to be”ez money” like the keystone pipeline. I wish our government gave two shits about treaties with not only the natives but anybody.
How many are a final destination? Orlando is a big hub for planes coming from South America and Atlanta is the biggest US hub, so probably a lot of people flying that route are connecting and wouldn't make a lot of sense to get a plane ticket and then a train and then another flight
- You can have a high speed train station at the airport as well. A lot of European big hubs have that.
- It would absolutly make sense ? Especially if there are night trains that go slower and can help you get rest without paying an hotel.
- ATL is the second largest hub in the US after Chicago?
  If you can fly pretty much anywhere from ATL in the world.

like everything in the 70s and 80s, airline deregulation was a stain that never should have happened

And nothing will be fixed while "the left" in the US still worship and lionize Carter, who started all the mess.
Yes, Trump is literally worse, but both parties are two sides of the same coin. You cannot save the country by electing neo-liberals, it'll always be further right than before.
- Trumps in the process of nazi round two and your dumb ass is over here still throwing around both sides same
- Interesting claim, the Great Man Theory of Neoliberalism.
  Every lefty I know certainly can't stop talking about how much they love Carter's 1976 political platform, which everyone remembers and cares about.
- i actually was on wikipedia looking up an article on eastern airlines (i was watching ernest saves christmas and old things make me go down wikipedia rabbit holes) and was shocked it started in the 70s under him

But how can you expect me to think about things like this, when there's a possibility of someone with genitals that don't look like mine in my restroom?

Have you ever seen a ducks penis? Just be glad whatever genitals you have isn't a ducks penis. It's so fucked up that they don't even GET a bathroom. They just pee in the drinking water. They pee in lakes. Ponds. Your bathtub. They pee anywhere they want, any time they want.
Thats why they all hang out at parks, and the government doesn't stop them. Think about it man. You don't see lions and tigers and bears at the park......because Disney owns the rights to The Wizard of Oz. So you can't see those animals for free! They gotta get locked up in jail and then they call it a zoo, and charge you $22.50 per adult, and $12 per child under 12. Except on Mondays where it's free if you're a local resident of the county.
But they don't do that with ducks. You know what else Disney owns? The Mighty Ducks. Darkwing Duck.
And NOBODY is paying money to see those properties. So they don't arrest the ducks, because theres no profit there. Follow the money. It all leads back to those crazy duck penis's, and nobody wants to admit that Howard the Duck is officially a Marvel character, living in the same MCU as Spiderman, and Ironman, and the X-Men.
THATS why ducks don't have bathrooms, while humans fight over things like trans athletes being allowed to play sports in college, and throwing green dildos at female basketball players to promote cryptocurrencies.
We live in the dumbest timeline.
- Except on Mondays where it's free if you're a local resident of the county.
  I read this and immediately knew who posted it.
- And yet Donald doesn't even wear pants.

Could any kind soul provide a TL;DW for those of us who can't watch a video (for whatever reason)?

Tickets for flights are taxed at 7.5% to pay for the FAA
Average flight with many passengers pays over $2,300 per flight
Private jets don't have tickets to be taxed, are only taxed on fuel
Private jets pay an average of about $60 in FAA fees
Private jets take up about 7% of the FAA's resources, but only make up a fraction of a percent of the revenue
Thus when you pay the FAA fees on your economy class ticket, you're subsidizing operating the FAA for private jet flights, that don't pay enough to cover their costs.
- That’s. So. Fucked.
  Is shit like this doesnt radicalize you then you are lost as a human. Unsavablle.
- So not really the flights themselves, just the regulation overseeing the flights.
The FAA gathers taxes per person, not per plane. So a commercial flight has every single passenger paying, while a private jet only pays for a few people. That’s a difference of about $2300 for a commercial flight, vs about $60 for a private jet. Private flights make up about 7% of air travel, but contribute less than a tenth of a percent in taxes. But the air traffic controllers aren’t handling individual people; They’re handling planes. So private jets fund the ATC a lot less than commercial flights, even though they have just as much need.
This video says Canada taxes planes based on weight rating and distance traveled. So larger planes that can carry heavier loads (more people) get taxed more, while smaller planes (private jets) get taxed less. But they’re proportionally paying the same in taxes, instead of the rich people paying less.
There are long standing problems with this. Not sure of the exact point of the video, but here is an older article with some info: https://www.newsweek.com/why-are-private-jets-being-subsidized-you-and-me-641890
- Corporate jets use almost $1 billion of air traffic control resources, they only contribute around $200 million in fuel taxes, letting commercial passengers pick up their tab.
  Generally, corporate jets are exempt from the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) air transportation tax, a fee on the number of passengers and amount of cargo transported, which funds 95 percent of ATC operations.
  The maintenance and improvement of the ATC system's equipment and infrastructure is paid through the Airport and Airway Trust Fund (AATF), which is made up of excise taxes collected on aviation fuel, passenger transport and use of international air facilities.
It is in the wrong format anyway. Stop vertical video syndrome.

Jesus Christ america

You don't get rich by paying full freight.
- If you are paying full freight that means you ain't in the club. And that's just disgusting... Imagine being associated with the dirty peasants?!

Damn, that's something else altogether

Ehhhh. I wasn't very impressed with this video. For one thing, it felt more like a compilation of aviation-related clips rather than any kind of meat and potato that actually described the issue.

When they finally did, they started with the parking ramp analogy. If that truly is a good analogy, it's not so much that a "fancy" car would pay less, it's that a smaller car would. Pretty much any parking lot, ferry, etc that can hold different sizes of cars will charge more for a bus or semi truck than a regular car.

They also mention that fuel taxes are higher for small planes. I would love to know more about that, because that really could smooth things over but there aren't really any details (also $2400 for [let's just say] a 150-passenger 737 vs $60 for a private jet may scale similarly per passenger)

Finally, they very briefly bring up how Canada's system is much better because it uses a factor of weight and distance... Wouldn't that just mean those giant airliners pay more?!?

Bonus: let's not kid ourselves into thinking that American Airlines is public transit. It's still a for-profit corporation and if you lower a plane's FAA taxes, it'll directly benefit them.

Per-passenger is a stupid way to charge this tax because the service provided is per-plane.
The math in this video checks out, even when spreading the costs over all the passengers of a larger plane.
- A lot of the FAA fee is used to fund the various airport facilities, so yes it does make sense to charge on per-passenger basis.
- They weren’t saying the tax should be levied per passenger, only that the tax structure as it stands probably already scales well if you calculate per passenger.
The fuel rates are currently about $0.22/gallon, and are going up to $1.06/gallon over 5 years, but even that wouldn't put them on par with commercial flights (they pay 0.6% of the fees, but use 7% of resources, $1.06 divided by $0.22 gets you 4.81x the current 0.6%, which is still 2.9% of the fees, while using 7% of FAA resources.)
So even with the current fuel rate increases, private jets would still be paying less than half of what they end up using.
As a percentage of the total weight of a plane, passengers and their luggage constitute a much larger percentage of a commercial flight than a private one. So they are "more utilized" than a private jet, and can spread that cost over all their passengers.
Also, larger planes that fly longer distances cross more ATC zones, using up more ATC resources. They also take up more "room" in the sky, as e.g. ATC needs to leave more room for jet wash behind a heavy. So it makes sense from multiple perspectives that bigger planes pay more.
You also have to consider hobby pilots. Charging them the same amount as a 747 would be insane.
So it's a tradeoff: the Canadian system makes smaller planes pay more, proportionally, than a per-ticket model; but not so much more that it harms the smallest personal planes.
It's also just simpler. Personal plane? Private jet? Commercial passenger flight? Cargo plane? Same calculation for all of them.
(Yes, you could try to make it "only for flights with paid passengers", but then pilots of private jets would all of a sudden have a lot of very rich friends with whom they do a lot of personal flying. It's just so much easier if there's nothing subjective about it.)

But even if this tax was reduced or went away, what’s stopping the airlines from hiking up the price by that amount? Airlines are looking for any excuse to squeeze out more money from you. In that case you’d just be funding the airline execs’ private flights.

This is about taxes funding the FAA, and the implied conclusion of the video isn't that these taxes should be removed, but that they should be weighted more heavily towards private flights for the sake of fairness.
How would that even work? Commercial airlines and private jet operators are different entities.

First class and business pays for the economy seats

While that's true, and so First Class and Business Class subsidize private jets more than Economy Class does, that doesn't change the fact that Economy also subsidizes private jets.
- While that's true, and so First Class and Business Class
  Iwhats the math on this claim
Please do explain to the class how.
- Theyee probably right. We'd need to work out how much money their tickets are vs how much space they take up and compare that ratio to economy.