Originally Posted by Billiken
He did make one comment which interested me: The U.S. aviation industry could lose $5 billion this year while travelers pay $15 billion in flight-related taxes.
Obviously he's trying to position his agenda, but the taxes can be outrageous, especially on cheaper trips:
One of my upcoming tickets:
1 Adult $53.49
Taxes $30.41
Total Price $83.90
That's a 57% rate of taxation, and doesn't include any other taxes paid by CO (income taxes, payroll taxes on its employees, property taxes on facilities, etc. etc. etc.)
At the same time, we used to have a flat 10% tax years ago, and the majors lobbied for the current system (lower percentage + fees per segment). Their idea was to have a bigger tax impact on LCCs such as Southwest (back in the day, it took you 3-4 stops to fly transcon on WN so segment fees would hit them more), all while they got a break on their $2,000 tickets. Of course now fares have come down and WN sells many non-stop or 1-stop tickets.
So they do kind of deserve the tax scheme that they asked for.