Airlines for America Renews Protest of Aviation Tax Hikes

Airlines for America (A4A), which represents major U.S. airlines, is using the President Obama’s release of the 2013 budget as an opportunity to again raise its ongoing protest of what it calls taxes that unfairly burden airlines and their customers. The group says that air taxes will not go toward improving air services but to cutting the deficit and that such taxes have a chilling effect on travel.

The new taxes would increase aviation security taxes to $7.50 for each one-way trip in 2018, which A4A says would generate $18 billion. There’s also proposal to add a new $100 per flight tax with a portion of those proceeds also going toward deficit reduction.

“It makes absolutely no sense at a time when we should be encouraging economic and business development enabled by travel and tourism, that we would discourage flying by trying to balance the budget on the backs of airline customers with yet another tax,” said Nicholas E. Calio, A4A’s president and CEO.