Mesa’s Falcon Field Fee Fight Continues

The desire to stop the powers that be at Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona, to implement onerous landing fees has compelled heavy hitters nationally to join the movement against them. In July, AOPA filed comments supporting the latest Part 13 complaint against the City of Mesa, asserting that the financial methodology used in developing the fee structure was not sound and violated grant assurances. The association joined the Arizona Pilots Association and the Aviation Safety Advisory Group of Arizona in supporting the four Part 13 complaints to date filed by airport tenants and a consortium of flight training organizations at KFFZ.

In response to the opposition, the city council voted 6-1 in late July to delay the implementation of the landing fee program for another 90 days from July 27, taking it into late October. The dissenting vote was cast by the councilwoman who proposed the fees in the first place, Alicia Goforth. The vote has triggered an independent audit led by the city’s own outside legal counsel. 

The published schedule, accessible here, outlines what Mesa’s City Council was to put in motion as of May 1, with fees charged to both resident and transient aircraft using the airport. According to the document, a Cessna 172 based at the airport, weighing 2,450, would be charged $20.35. That increases to $24.35 for itinerant Skyhawks, as an example. The tally adds up quickly for a training aircraft used for practicing landings, which might rack up 10 touchdowns within a session. While the first 10 landings each month for a based aircraft are exempt, that doesn’t help the flight schools based there, which could exceed that number easily in one busy morning.

And if the traffic level drops, those aircraft will potentially be charged more, according to the fine print: “The adopted landing fees were based on an estimated reduction of aircraft operations of ten percent. If the average number of aircraft operations at Falcon Field decreases by twenty percent or more from the year-over-year numbers by month (i.e., a reduction that is 10% or more from the expected 10% reduction) for three consecutive months, then the City Manager or designee, in City Manager’s or designee’s discretion, not more than once and within eighteen months after initial adoption of landing fees, may increase landing fees by an amount equal to the average percentage decrease for the three months in the amount that is greater than 10%.”

Through a company spokesperson, KFFZ-based Thrust Flight shared the joint letter it sent in conjunction with fellow flight training organization CAE on July 30 to the FAA, which outlined the concerns with several aspects of the city of Mesa’s response to the Part 13 complaints.

The city’s comparative study made to other locations where landing fees are charged to training aircraft—encapsulated in Attachment K, a spreadsheet also shared with AvBrief—appears to show that while some comparably busy airports such as San Antonio International (KSAT) in Texas and Kissimmee (KISM) in Florida charge similar fees for aircraft less than 6,000 pounds ($20 and $18, respectively), complete exemptions are made for based aircraft. The only ones in the study charging in the $20-per-landing range noted that don’t exempt based aircraft are Teterboro, New Jersey (KTEB), Jacksonville, Florida (KJAX), and Dallas-Love Field (KLOV). “Of the airports listed on Attachment K, only those within close proximity to extremely congested Class B airspace charge landing fees to flight schools; accordingly, the volume of flight school training operations at those airports is significantly less than the volume at Falcon Field,” noted the letter.

The threat to those flight training businesses on the airport was clearly stated several times in the letter, and summarized here: “At worst, the facts indicate the 2024 adoption of the cost center allocation method functions as a façade for what certain public statements convey: the City simply intends to force flight schools to leave Falcon Field Airport.”