AVmail: August 8, 2011

Each week, we run a sampling of the letters received to our editorial inbox here in AVmail. One letter that's particularly relevant, informative, or otherwise compelling will headline this section as our "Letter of the Week," and we'll send the author an official AVweb baseball cap as a "thank you" for interacting with us (and the rest of our readership). Send us your comments and questions using this form. Please include your mailing address in your e-mail (just in case your letter is our "Letter of the Week"); by the same token, please let us know if your message is not intended for publication.

Letter of the Week: Things Will Be Better If Pilots Pay

Regarding the user fee issue: As a group, aircraft owner/operators are among the most affluent members of society. We should never have been on the government dole and should always have been paying for every service we get.

This is necessary not only as a matter of equity, but we must have control of the "services" offered. Free enterprise should be allowed to provide WX, traffic, ATC, whatever.

Cell phones automatically and invisibly change frequencies and power levels constantly. Why in this age should we have government workers telling us when to make frequency changes? We are held back by government's inability to adapt to the times. If we were paying, we would demand efficiency.

So, for both reasons, we should pay.

Darryl Phillips

... Or It Will Get Worse

This "departure fee" is only the start of the usual ruse of our government to open the door to other user fees. Once this small fee is allowed, it will lead to many other fees, not to mention a simple ongoing set of increases on this fee to where it becomes a monster in and of itself.

This is simply a "foot in the door," and acceptance of this fee is simply the start of the proverbial snowball rolling down the hill. History has shown this to us time after time after time.

Blaine Banks

Let D. B. Die

This is a bad question. Let it die. He stole $200,000. I'd bet the FBI and other agencies have spent more than $20,000,000 trying to solve this. Worse than that, they are still spending money. Let it die. Enough money has been wasted on a dead man. Your question just perpetuates the spending of more taxpayer dollars.

Fred Willson