Most of it now falls under the FAA airport improvement grants program. FAA Grant Assurance #22 allows airports to set fees for the use of facilities as long as they are reasonable, applied uniformly, and not used to unfairly restrict access. The same program restricts owners or municipalities from taking these fees for other non-airport uses thus creating a closed loop where fees can only be used for facility improvements.
www.federalregister.gov
Probably a very behind the scene fight between local ATC arguing about personnel and workloads vs local business owners wanting the ramp and fuel sales.
Also, in some cases, airfield use cameras to record N number for billing purposes.
TINS- the Richmond, VA FSDO made the soaring club I belong to remove the batteries and electric instruments (to include radios and transponders) out of a good portion of our gliders because they were not certificated with an electrical system. Handheld radios don't work well in a metal box, and gliders don't give a very good radar return.
Spot on @Swanee - this is a reflection of my own experience managing a club and with individual aircraft ownership. Compliance over practical safety. Its killing the GA community. Pilots and owner/operators should treat every FSDO interaction as a jeopardy event.
WTF? Lots of planes flying were certified w/o electrical systems. Some later had the capability added within FARs. My plane was certified in 1939 w/o electrical system, built in 1946. I now have lights radio and transponder on a battery, no generator. That FSDO is AFU. Their enforcement actions clearly compromise safety by denying pilots of those aircraft the ability to deconflict, call for weather, etc.
Do these chuckleheads consider people just shop around excising the difficult FSDOs? When I was ready for my logbook review for my ATP, I was told flat out to avoid this Office and go that Office because one was notoriously adversarial and critical, the other reasonable and helpful. Worth the drive.
Today I was brought up to speed and the efforts to institute landing fees at the home airport of my chapter of the AAHF. In this case the fees are promoted by the city, primarily to cut down on noise complaints. The city hopes that it will discourage touch and goes and training in general. The scheme is for five free landings a month. Starting at the 6th landing it's a $28.00 fee per touchdown per airframe. There are several flight schools on the field including a very large CAE ab initio program. Also based on the field is MD helicopters and Boeing helicopters. Boeing is pushing back even though it would have little impact on their operations. This particular fee schedule was supposed to accommodate the basic currency requirement by getting 3 takeoffs and landings every 90 days. I's clear that any fee per landing is going to impact currency as its very intent is to discourage flying activity. The airport generates over $750 million in economic activity. The airport itself is against landing fees, but it is owned by the city. Meanwhile very large city owned legacy hangars pay rent to the city on the order of 75% less than market rate for a lease on the more numerous private built hangars on airport leased land.Most of it now falls under the FAA airport improvement grants program. FAA Grant Assurance #22 allows airports to set fees for the use of facilities as long as they are reasonable, applied uniformly, and not used to unfairly restrict access. The same program restricts owners or municipalities from taking these fees for other non-airport uses thus creating a closed loop where fees can only be used for facility improvements.
If you like regulatory language you can sum it all up here!
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Sounds like an interesting effort championed by someone who is not a pilot.