How to Level the Playing Field in Global Aviation

This week’s topic for discussion is how the United States can level the playing field against foreign competitor airlines. With some of the foreign airlines that are owned and operated by that countries government it obviously creates a monopoly within the country. It is extremely difficult for other airlines in the world to compete with this because of how much government funding the foreign airlines receive.

In an article from SmarterTravel.com Ed Perkins does a good job breaking down and using example on just how much of your total ticket cost is dedicated to government taxes. although the taxes here in the united states are really high in aviation in other countries if they do not charge you a tax for certain things on your ticket you hit you other different types of fees, such as departure fees that actually have to be paid in cash at the airport. It is very obvious looking at this topic from the general public’s point of view how they can be upset that a good percent of the price is not even going towards the actual flight. But what the general public does not realize is that these taxes are absolutely needed in order to maintain the current system the aviation industry has in place.

 

Now the question is what can be done in regards the United States tax policy in order to level the playing field with our foreign competition. The first thing that comes to mind is finding a way to reduce our taxes without it affecting the yearly maintenance and upkeep of our airports, navigation systems, etc. Another way to ensure the U.S. is more competitive is to increase the overall experience during flights in other words make sure the customers feel from quantity to quality. This in turn could increase the total business of the aviation industry and in turn create more jobs for everyone.

Intro

What do you want be when you grow up? When I was asked this question as a child it would always vary between a baseball player, a hockey player, policeman and plenty of other typical little kid answers. As I got older (high school) I obviously realized that the dream of being professional athlete was WAY out of the picture, I started putting thought into what obtainable career I wanted to pursue. I just asked myself what is something that you would wake up every morning and enjoy going to go do. After putting a little thought into it I thought what office in the world has better view than one of a pilot. With me only ever being on one commercial flight in my whole life I was not ready to commit completely to this until I absolutely knew for certain this is what I wanted to do.

When it came down to choosing where to go for my flight training I had already decided that I wanted to get a degree as well. It was an easy choice when finding out Eastern had a flight program mostly because of how close it was to my house.  I started at Eastern in the Fall of 2009 but unfortunately was not able to start flying until about half way through the Winter Semester (2010). It only took one flight for me to decide that this was for sure what I wanted to do.

After I finish school I would like to do the traditional route of CFI, Regional Airlines, and then one of main legacy carriers. Although this is what I would like to do I am pretty open to a lot of other routes as well including freight.  In the end the biggest thing to me is being able to Fly for one of the main airlines any job in between now and then as long as I am flying is fine with me.