WEST UNION, Ohio -- This year more than a billion dollars of your tax money is going to US airports where not a single airliner flies.
They're called general aviation airports, and a Federal program awards big grants to some that can go an entire day without seeing a single flight.
You pay the tax every time you buy an airline ticket. Often hidden in the total price, it amounts to about $25 of a typical $300 round trip airfare.
But once that money takes off from CVG, some of it lands at tiny strips like Alexander Salamon Airport in Adams County.
It has a single runway with just one aircraft parked on the tarmac -- a 53-year-old Cessna 172.
Yet this small airport has received $807,187 in Federal grants in just the last five years, according to data from the Pew Charitable Trusts. You can search all grants by airport name or congressional district here.
"If the fares are being generated by the major airports, that's where the money should be returned," say Tom Brinkman, Jr., a tax hawk and former Ohio state legislator.
Brinkman asks why the FAA is using so much public money to fund private pilots. "Is it a fair use of the money? Because it's really the fare paying public who is funding this, and shouldn't they ultimately be the ones who benefit through improved runways, improved facilities and that type of thing?"
The money is doled out by the FAA's Airport Improvement Program, or AIP. Most does go to major airports like CVG.
But $1.2 billion this year will go to general aviation airports, like the little airfield in Adams County.
When we visited Salamon Airport, there were more birds overhead than airplanes. Yet the airport got nearly $78,000 to rehabilitate its only runway in 2005, and another $460,568 to "remove obstructions" in 2007.
Before and after satellite photos from Google Earth show the removal of about 30 acres of trees parallel to the runway. (See the Before and After photos in the slideshow above.)
This remote airport got twice the Federal grant money as Cincinnati's Lunken Airport, which sees many more flights every day, including Air Force One from time to time. President George W. Bush flew into Lunken in 2007.
Brinkman says, "you could make an argument in case of Lunken that's a back-up airport that needs to be there in case something goes awry at CVG. You certainly want to have that for the fare-paying public, but nothing that lands at CVG is going to land in the middle of Adams County."
Phil Boyer disagrees. "These airports depend on that money." Boyer is the immediate past president of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, or AOPA. He recently retired to Batavia with is 1941 Waco bi-plane in large part because of Clermont County's excellent general aviation airport.
"Clermont County Airport, not a big airport, can't handle a jetliner. But it supports several business, one employing 200 people," says Boyer.
Once private pilot's chief lobbyist in Washington, Boyer says all public airports are part of our transportation infrastructure, just like our national network of interstates and county roads.
"Don't forget," he says, "the small plane, the single engine Cessna, Piper, Cirrus, whatever, is paying through a fuel tax. So it isn't as if these planes aren't paying, they're just paying in a different way than the airline passenger."
Commercial airports charge a landing fee for every aircraft. But the vast majority of general aviation airports don't charge any usage fees at all. They're subsidized by those Federal grants, and congress changed the law to fund 95% of any approved project.
Boyer defends that investment, saying it pays dividends to all taxpayers. "General aviation, not the airlines, just general aviation, supports our economy by about $150 billion a year," says Boyer.
He concludes, "a mile of highway, Federal investment, gets you how far? One mile. A mile of runway, federal investment, gets you anywhere."
