Massachusetts Senate, bill no 2305. An Act to mitigate the climate impact of private and corporate air travel.
https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/S2305.Html
Section 51O. An airport commission governing a municipal or county owned airport or the board of directors of the Massachusetts port authority shall assess a climate impact landing fee of not less than one thousand dollars on personal aircraft, corporate owned aircraft and charter rental aircraft each time that any such an aircraft is to
land at an airport in the commonwealth.
Is that a proposal? If so, hopefully it will get shut down. If not, well, there goes Massachusetts.
This sounds pretty much what Switzerland had proposed on it’s CO2 bill but which then got shot down for small GA. Hopefully the whole law will get voted down in June.
New Hampshire better start an airport hangar expansion program 
(FAA will in actuality come down on this like a ton of bricks)
Madness. Climate change is not mitigated by charging extortionate fees from a sector of traffic that accounts for a miniscule portion of greenhouse gas emissions. Also, completely disproportionate to levy the same fee on say a C152 and a Gulfstream G650, which habe very different climate impacts…
We, the people, are to blame. We keep voting for morons to lead us. Even when it is clear that is what they are, before we go to the ballot box. But have no fear, morons rarely have strong convictions and can change their mind faster than they can change their socks.
These days, blind activism seems to be the name of the game. Mr. Cyr (https://www.senatorcyr.com/) would obviously ban any flight school and flight training in the whole state with that bill. Interestingly, he’s the Senator from Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Let’s see what his billionaire neighbours say about his brilliant idea (maybe: “Finally all those small C172 banned so more space for my G650ER. Thanks, Julian. See you for barbeque?” – ah, no, that doesn’t sound well with one of the other ideas he has: “Establishes a statewide transfer tax on property sales where the property value exceeds $2 million.” :-) )
What’s especially ironic is, is that his predecessor as Senator, Dan Wolf, was a pilot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Wolf – and is shown as such on his Wikipedia page :-)
Well, it appears that this is a shot in the dark by so far ONE State Senator in the commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Not a lot of chances that it will go anywhere. However, it should better be watched.
If I get it right, the Senator in question represents Marthas Vineyard and the Nantucket Islands. I wonder how he expects to get away with this which would close down all the GA in those islands and therefore deny quite a few of his constituency the means of transport to and from their properties.
Well I take a more positive view.
Without any change, the future for GA is not positive.
In 10 years time the sale of new petrol/diesel cars will be banned in many places, and in 20 years time they will be banned in most places.
Once this starts, it will accelerate the reduction in the availability of petrol & diesel. (Who will buy a petrol car when half the petrol stations have closed for lack of business and it gets harder to find a convenient station)?
When petrol is largely gone, then so will be AVGAS. I don’t believe AVGAS is produced in sufficient volumes to justify its separate production when petrol is gone.
So we need to be looking to the future for a more sustainable future.
Senators like this will get nowhere with their proposals. But such proposals popping up from time to time will help generate funding for GA industries researching alternative fuels, be that electric or hydrogen, as well a funding for commercial travel alternatives.
Only the other day I was reading about someone trying to retrofit an electric motor to a GA experimental aircraft. We need these ‘scare stories’ to keep pushing development on so that we have an alternative when petrol (and thus avgas) is gone. I don’t think that is as far away as many think. Better to prepare for it and have a way forward.
dublinpilot wrote:
I don’t believe AVGAS is produced in sufficient volumes to justify its separate production when petrol is gone.
This sentence is wandering around since, I don’t know, at least the 1970s. And it’s coming and it’s going. It is always the same: We have only 10 years to go. AVGAS will be out soon!
I heard pilots discussing about that already when I was a young boy, and someone tried to explain to me the differences about these fuels and that it’s just so small an amount of AVGAS that they won’t produce it any longer.
We’ll see about what’s coming then. It will be produced when you can make money on it – and when it’s not legally prohibited. Whether you (we) want to pay 4 or 6 or even 10 Euros per liter, that’s another question. And then it may be, that AVGAS is only produced on some days a month. But I don’t think that we will note it that much.
dublinpilot wrote:
Better to prepare for it and have a way forward.
To that I fully agree. There have evolved some options which might save all the GA from restrictions. I think the most important thing with GA is, that when seen from outside that effort is visible on reducing pollution. The Diesel engines are a good step on this – who knows there might be retrofit available for more planes soon (and I would believe no one who tells me that Jet A1 will perish in the next 50 years). The Rotax engines can be used with very low fuel consumption, and on car gas, and there are many designs up to twin Rotax. The effort in electric flying is another good step.
Sooner or later I think that school flying could be done on electric “fuel”, this also eliminates all the flying, where the red knob is intentionally not touched at all. But as I said, if we are willing to pay the price, there will always be AVGAS.
dublinpilot wrote:
When petrol is largely gone, then so will be AVGAS. I don’t believe AVGAS is produced in sufficient volumes to justify its separate production when petrol is gone.
AFAIU the production of AVGAS has nothing to do with the production of petrol for cars. AVGAS is already produced separately. (Which explains the high price (pre-tax) compared with petrol.)
