Airlines for America denounces Senate highway revenue diversion plan

WASHINGTON, DC – Airlines for America (A4A), the industry trade organization for the leading U.S.

WASHINGTON, DC – Airlines for America (A4A), the industry trade organization for the leading U.S. airlines, today denounced a Senate plan that calls for diverting funds that airline passengers pay in Transportation Security Administration (TSA) fees and Immigration and Customs fees to pay for the highway trust fund, calling it a misguided policy that harms airline passengers.

As part of the offsets in the Senate Highway bill, the plan calls for using portions of revenue assumed to be collected from TSA fees in years 2024 and 2025 to offset government costs for a highway fix this year. Moreover, the Senate plan would substantially increase the cost of air travel by indexing immigration and customs fees to inflation. In total, the bill makes airline passengers pay $9.2 billion for surface transportation by diverting ticket taxes to the highway trust fund.

โ€œThis is bad, misguided policy that completely ignores the rights of airline passengers, who are already overpaying in taxes to the federal government every time they fly,โ€ said A4A President and CEO Nicholas E. Calio. โ€œLike the House proposal, this wrongly diverts dollars airline passengers pay for safety and security to fund the use of highways. To suggest that airline passengers should pay even more in federal taxes for something unrelated to air travel makes no sense and further punishes some two million taxpayers who fly every day.โ€

On a typical, domestic $300 round-trip ticket, airline passengers can already pay $63 in federal taxes, or 21 percent, a rate that rivals taxes on alcohol and tobacco.

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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