I have read today that the 500CHF charge has been accepted by the Städterat.
It’s kind of mind boggling that some pilot organisation doesn’t do anything. This will kill private GA as we know it. Or are there more to this that have not yet come forth?
While I am sorry for private pilots who will lose their leisure activity, presumably quite a lot of people will lose their jobs and businesses. How are they represented?
eddsPeter wrote:
I have read today that the 500CHF charge has been accepted by the Städterat.
That is what triggered all this. Now it has to go to the “Nationalrat” (lower house). And then, if they also accept it, it can be challenged to a referendum.
I regard this as almost certain as the whole package hits everybody massively. Unless the Nationalrat changes it down to something reasonable, which in the current climate is not very likely.
LeSving wrote:
It’s kind of mind boggling that some pilot organisation doesn’t do anything. This will kill private GA as we know it. Or are there more to this that have not yet come forth?
Aeroclub and AOPA have definitly taken note and have advised their members to vote accordingly in the national elections in October, which would if successful stop a green landslide in parliament. They will certainly keep fighting this and if it should become law, try to migate the consequences for us. The Federal council then has to develop the implementation, where they still have the possibility to exclude small GA or to migate it. What I hear is that the minister of transport is for adding the fuel tax implemented on cars also to Avgas instead (which would cause Avgas to become a rare commodity though).
Timothy wrote:
While I am sorry for private pilots who will lose their leisure activity, presumably quite a lot of people will lose their jobs and businesses. How are they represented?
Via AOPA and the clubs basically as well as some MP’s who try to show the consequences.
You are right however, projections show that this thing endangers not only small GA but also airports living of Biz Jets such as Samedan and particularly Altenrhein, Lugano and so on, where people would simply go to Friedrichshafen or Milan to avoid the taxes.
They are discussing another bombshell which has been off the radar for a while: Implementing full fuel tax on CAT on cross border traffic. That would cause Switzerland to loose all airline traffic but a few feeder routes where throughtankage is possible as well as most biz jet traffic. Private GA is already paying the full tax.
Interesting how the minister of transport (Social Democrat) has reacted to the 500 franc punitive tax proposal. She opposed the proposal but not because she sees the problems for aviation.
Her concern mainly is that it is not enough to make a biz jet fly less. And that it is difficult to enforce because a lot of GA does not file flight plans on domestic flights.
These two tidbits show nicely what she really thinks. Tax the filthy swine in their biz jets until they go away for good and make darn sure that every single movement of small GA without flight plan is also taken to the cash desk. So nobody can say this woman is pro aviation, more like the job of the gardener has been handed to a Tasmanian Devil.
An amazing disconnect with reality.
Presumably their govt officials will give up their bizjets too – most unlikely since the whole of Europe’s govt flies in them, especially on any urgent govt business.
I still can’t believe Switzerland – of all places – is doing something like this. 500 euros will totally kill the light GA there, unless there is widespread civil disobedience (flying below the radar).
It’s not about giving up bizjets all together. It’s about paying a tax that hurts just enough so you can fly a bizjet and feel good about it, with no concerns about the environment.
This is the logic of most red/green environmentalists.
LeSving wrote:
It’s not about giving up bizjets all together. It’s about paying a tax that hurts just enough so you can fly a bizjet and feel good about it, with no concerns about the environment.
This is the logic of most red/green environmentalists.
Add to that the ticket taxes on the airline seats and you are spot on. Even though in case of biz jets, as you can see from the reaction of our transport minister, she’d rather have a lot higher tax because she doesn’t think the 500 CHF one is enough to eradicate them.
The “logic” behind it is that if airline pax should pay between 30 and 150 CHF to fly, then so should pax on private flights, only that it is bureaucratically difficult (why?) to take in pax taxes there (which is obviously bollox as it is done already in most airports). So 500 per biz jet would bring “justice” to that. Which of course is also wrong as by their logic each seat in the biz jet would have to be charged by 150 CHF (as now it’s not lenght of flight anymore but class of travel which some want to tax differently).
Again, I call b.s. If they wanted to implement the airline tax to COMMERCIAL small GA, then that is quite easy. The max money then would be about 90 CHF for a 4 seater if each pax has to pay 30 francs CO2 tax. It will still hurt GA but not to that extent. They may well bring this in the Nationalrat only again for all GA, also non commercial, so if you take the wife and kid, there go between 60 and 300 Francs…
Others say the whole thing is rubbish and it would be enough to rise fuel tax to about 20 € a liter to stop fossile fuels right then. Well, it probably would be, but again, it would hit the small and middle incomes most. And needless to say, it would kill off the economy massively. Which is of course what these people want. How was that Hymn of the GDR? “Resurrected from the ruins”`?
All this is about envy and about destruction of society. It has nothing to do with the climate.
Piston GA already pays quite a lot of tax on the fuel (which the airlines don’t).
Mooney_Driver wrote:
only that it is bureaucratically difficult (why?) to take in pax taxes [for private flights] (which is obviously bollox as it is done already in most airports).
It is? Maybe in Switzerland..? In my experience it is unusual for airports to charge pax fees for private flights.
