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Erik, Aviation fuel taxes go to the Aviation Trust Fund.  They are not earmarked, which means they can be used to support a variety of FAA operations.  The FAA typically covers 80 to 85 per cent of its costs from fuel taxes, fees, excise taxes, etc.  Jet fuel is taxed at 21.9 cents per gallon.  However, because of exemptions, the commercial airlines pay only 4.4 cents per gallon, although as one can imagine, they gobble up a lot of fuel and generate a lot of tax revenue.  Aviation gasoline is taxed 19.4 cents per gallon.  In addition, each state imposes an aviation fuel tax on top of the federal aviation taxes, just as they do for the motor fuels that we use in our cars. I don't see why Amtrak should be exempt from fuel taxes or any other taxes.  The exemption gives it an advantage over its competitors, especially competing bus operators, i.e. Bolt Bus, Red Bus, Peter Pan, etc. The airlines pay inventory, property, excise, sales, etc. taxes, although frequently they are buried in lease agreements or rental charges.  During the 90s, for example, Dallas, TX, which is home to Southest Airlines, hit the company with very high inventory taxes.  Southwest threatened to move its headquarters if the city did  not reduce the taxes.  The city tax office reassessed the value of the inventory and decided it had been overly aggressive in valuing the inventory, thereby reducing the inventory tax bill for Southwest.  Most airports in the United States are owned by municipalities, counties, or airport authorities.  The airports don't pay property taxes.  It would not make any sense for them to do so.  But they are required to recover the cost of the facilities from the users, although on occasion they get monies from the federal government for airport improvements.  However, the amounts, according to the FAA budgets, are relatively small. The airlines pay a variety of fees to use the airports, i.e. landing fees, gate fees, terminal fees, hangar fees, etc.  In most instances their payments reflect their proportional use of the facilities.  They don't pay the total cost of the facilities because in most instances they are not the sole user of the facilities. By the same token they are not the sole users of the airways.  According to the FAA, nationwide the airlines account for approximately 32.5 per cent of flight operations, with most of the operations being accounted for by general aviation.     In 2007 the commercial airline industry had net income of $4.6 billion.  In 2008 they lost $14.7 billion, and in 2009 they lost $5.7 billion.  I have not pulled the numbers for 2010, but I understand that they had positive net income in 2010.  American Airlines is financially challenged.  Yet, it had positive net income in 2005 and 2006.  More important than the Income Statement or any other financial statement for that matter is the Statement of Cash Flows.  This is the statement that tells investors whether the company has a future.  Thus, although American, as an example, lost money in 2010, 2009, and 2008, according to the Income Statement, it had positive cash flows in 2010 and 2008.  Equally important, it was able to obtain approximately $2 billion in funds for capital expenditures, i.e. new airplanes, facilities, etc.  They would not have been able to arrange this financing if they had never generated a positive return for their shareholders or if the investment community believed that the company is not likely to continue as a going concern.  Thus, by example, I am saying that one really needs to drill into airline finances to understand them and by implication the health of the industry.    Clearly, the airline industry does not generate high returns, but it is not true to say that it has never produced a return for their investors.  In any given year some of the airlines, even in the worst of times, generate a positive return to their shareholders, whilst some of them have difficulty generating a positive return under the best of times.
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