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[quote user="schlimm"] [quote user="Sam1"]n FY08 the average federal subsidy for Amtrak was $48.50 per passenger or 22.61 cents per passenger mile.  The average federal subsidy for the nation's commercial airlines was $3.92 per passenger or .45 cents per passenger mile, [/quote]  Fact check:  In the 2009 budget, total FAA = $14.6 Bil. ATC = $9.7 Bil; total commercial passengers = 675 mil., which works out to a subsidy of $21.63 per passenger, of which $14.37 is for ATC.  sam1 makes the point that commercial aviation only uses ~30% of the budget, but in fact the facilities would require about the same level of infrastructure costs and operating expenses for just the airlines; private aviation and the military piggyback on.  Even if one accepts the allocated expense percentage, the subsidy (not including local taxes to build airports) is $6.49, not 3.92.  [/quote] The 2009 FAA budget is irrelevant; it is the actual numbers, which for FY09 will not be available on an audited basis until later this month, that are important.  The FY08 FAA Citizens Report - FY08 Summary of Performance and Financial Results - contains the latest audited numbers.  You appear to have attributed the total FAA operations budget to the commercial airlines.  Anyone with an understanding of cost accounting would know that this is incorrect.  Anyone familiar with aviation operations would know that you numbers are incorrect.  I hold every FAA license and rating (air and ground) with the exception of rotorcraft.  Equally important, accountants know that budgets are forcasts.  The bottom line, so to speak, is in the actual numbers at the end of the year or reporting period.  In a nutshell, you used the wrong numbers, allocated them improperly, and overlooked the Essential Air Service Program and the TSA Screening Program, amongst others.  In FY08 the nation's airlines carries an estimated 786.3 million passengers, of whom approximately 675 million were domestic flyers, whilst the remainder were international arrivals and departures.  I assumed that half the international passengers were in some part of the U.S. controlled airspace at some time during their flight.  Accordingly, a reasonable estimate of the federal subsidy is $ $3.35 per passenger and .42 cents per domestic passenger mile as per acceptable cost allocation methods.  Information to determine the portion of the international miles controlled by the FAA's operations is not available.  In FY08 the Treasury Department, which funds the FAA, transferred $2,231,396,000 net from the general fund to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund (AATF) to cover the FAA's activities not supported by revenues.  Assuming airline operations constitute 30.6 per cent of FAA operations, which is an average of the estimated commercial flights controlled by a tower and a control center, the subsidy allocable to the airlines was $682,807,176.  Most of the general funds transfer went to Operations and Safety, which benefit the commercial carriers proportionally.  The driver for FAA operations is number of aircraft controlled.  It is not the number of passengers carried in each aircraft.  However, the number of passengers is a key factor in determining passenger seat miles, which is the only meaningful way to compare per unit cost between modes of transport.  Using aircraft, trains, vehicles, boats, etc. as a unit of comparative measure would be meaningless.  Interestingly, in 2008 the FAA changed its air carrier safety measure from Commercial Air Carrier Fatal Accident Rate to Commercial Air Carrier Fatalities per 100 Million Persons.  It is a more meaningful statistic.  All other FAA costs [Grants-in-Aid for Airports (AIP), Facilities and Equipment (F&E), and Research, Engineering, and Development (R,E&D)] were covered by AATF funds, which come from ticket taxes, fees, etc. The Essential Air Services Program received $141,258,000.  The regional airlines that provide services under the program were the major beneficiary of the program.  The Transportation Screening Program, which is managed by Homeland Security, was allocated $5,300,000,000 for FY08.  Approximately 70 per cent of the cost of the program is paid for through ticket taxes and other fees.  Thus, I assumed that the difference, $1,590,000,000, which was funded from the general fund, was a subsidy to be worn wholly by the airlines. The total federal subsidy allocated to the airlines is $2,414,065,176, divided by the number of passengers produces a subsidy of $3.35 per passenger.   Some passenger rail advocates point to a variety of difficult to determine subsidies supposedly received by the airlines whilst overlooking similar subsidies (past and present) that have accrued to passenger rail operations.  One of their favorites is the tax free funding that was used, at least in part, to build most of the nation's commercial airports.  The value of this subsidy, which is no different in kind, than the tax free funding many of the facilities used by Amtrak or its predecessor passenger rail operations have received, is not nearly as great as many people assume.  It is the difference between fully taxable funding and tax free funding for that portion of the facilities used by commercial air.  Over the years, depending on when the airport was constructed, the spreads have been relatively small.  They would not add a significant amount to the figures shown above.  Activity based cost accounting attempts to tie a cost or revenue to an activity.  As is the case in all accounting, some judgment is required in making the allocations.  I used aircraft operations to allocate the FAA operational subsidy to the commercial airlines because it appears to be the most relevant activity.  There are other cost drivers that could be used, but I believe this is the best indicator of the commercial airline demand on FAA operations.  In any case, one could double or triple the federal subsidy to the commercial airlines, as well as the nation's highway users, and not come close to the per passenger or passenger per mile subsidy required by passenger rail.
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