From: Mike Hargrove
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 1:21 PM
To: AviationWatch@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [AvWatch] airports - does it have to be war?

The current situation is very simple - there are losers, those under
the flightpaths, and winners, those who fly and who gain employment
from the industry. Naturally those who gain want more, and the
losers reasonably try to resist - after all they get nothing in
return.

I'll use an analogy, to illustrate my point. Imagine you have two
neighbours, one each side of your house. They decide they would like
something of yours, say your garden. They don't fancy paying for it,
they just want it. They hold a vote. You lose, two votes to one. They
are happy, they got your garden for nothing, you are not happy. This
sort of thing creates winners and losers. The reason is that a fair
price is not being paid for what is being taken. And of course it is
ridiculous - and illegal.

Yet this is in effect what happens. In the case of an airport,
expansion will mean considerably more misery for those affected by
significant numbers of it's aircraft, in return for which they get
nothing. They are the losers. The winners are largely those who will
be able to fly off left right and centre, without paying a fair price
for the damage they cause. The "spoils" are split with those who
incrementally gain employment or prosperity for example through
owning airport operator shares. It is worth mentioning in this regard
that in the case of "slash and burn" low cost Aviation, most of the
spoils go to the passengers as relatively little employment results.

If the externalities were priced properly, fares would rise, perhaps
by of the order of £30 per person per flight, but then expansion if
it occurred would be to the benefit of society as a whole, rather
than a transfer from losers to winners. In addition considerable
funds would be raised, which could be partly spent compensating the
losers. Airport operators could start doing this tomorrow. If they
kicked off with a charge of £30 per head - then at 10 million
passengers per annum, £300 million would be generated which would
provide very considerable compensation to those under the
flightpaths. They could send cheques monthly, to each house affected,
based on a formula depending on number of overflights and loudness -
the data is all in the Air Traffic Control computer systems. This
would of course go out a long way in every direction - the leq 57dB
contours and so on are total nonsense, as everybody who knows
anything at all about aircraft noise knows. If they did this, there
would be considerably more appetite for expansion among those
affected by air traffic, and I would imagine a fair bit less by those
who are so keen at the moment. The reason is it would no longer be
unbalanced - it would no longer be, in effect, stealing from those
who stand to lose.

OK - not everyone would still agree with expansion - but at least
they would be fairly compensated, and at least society as a whole
would benefit from expansion. What happens now is simply to take more
from those who are already losing - and give it to the winners. How
this can be seen as reasonable I cannot imagine.

Ultimately, this must be the way forward. All the house data and
flighttrack data sits in computer systems. I think it would be
pretty straightforward to begin to pay those who are affected monthly
for the disbenefit.

Anyone know anywhere in the world that has started to do this?

cheers Mike


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