Fees added, raised at Falcon Field Airport in Mesa

The Mesa City Council recently unanimously voted to add and raise fees at Falcon Field Airport to generate its own income.

Before the city council’s March 23 vote, many planes did not pay landing fees at Falcon Field but that will now change on May 1 with the possibility of up to 90 days delay on landing fees while the city finds a third party to track flights.

Certain flights such as emergency landings, government or military aircraft, search-and-rescue or disaster response missions, medical transport, some training operations and specific tenant-related flights are exempt from the fees.

Small planes will pay roughly $20-$24 to land at Falcon Field while larger planes will pay a landing fee based on weight.

Beyond landing fees, the proposal raises costs across the board including higher rent for hangars and storage, increased tiedown fees, a 15-cent-per-gallon fuel fee, larger security deposits, and a new option for businesses to pay to advertise in the terminal.

City Manager Scott Butler said the new fees are proposed because the money that has helped sustain the airport for the last several years is running dry and without a new stream of income Falcon Field will fall into a deficit.

“If we don’t change the trajectory of how we would finance these infrastructure projects (we will go into a deficit),” he said.

City Attorney Jim Smith said these fees were only being proposed by council to make Falcon Field as self-sufficient as possible.

“Staff is proposing landing fees to make Falcon Field Airport as financially self-sustaining as possible. The fees are not being proposed to reduce noise or flight traffic, discriminate against a specific user, or favor one user over another similarly situated user,” Smith said. “Simply noise reduction and flight traffic is not part of our reason for the proposed fees and it’s not part of its agenda.”

Dan Streufert, a pilot who has been based at Falcon Field for roughly the last two decades, thinks the proposed landing fees to generate more revenue is not necessary for the airport and will also end up costing the city.

The proposed fees will cause waves all over the country and in the end the airport will pay more in legal fees defending the landing charges than they make in revenue from it and could even become dangerous if pilots try to avoid the fees, Streufert said.

“There’s a whole safety aspect to this,” he said. “A lot of people that maybe don’t like landing fees if they turn off their transponders, two planes hitting each other and falling down on a house: you’re gonna have a lot more problems than just some shortfall.”

James Maxcy spoke on behalf of Falcon Flying Club, a nonprofit organization based at Falcon Field that teaches junior high and high school students how to fly as affordably as possible.

With the new proposed landing fees the club could be in jeopardy, Maxcy said.

“If these landing fees go into effect, our program that’s been around for I think about 30 years at Falcon Field Airport isn’t going to exist anymore because we can’t afford to run it and allow students to learn how to fly,” he said.

Some community members spoke about the potential impact on grants the airport receives if the landing fees are adopted and pilots who cannot pay the increased costs decide to move elsewhere.

Other pilots pointed to the discrepancy between taxpayer dollars being used to fund Mesa Gateway Airport but not Falcon Field Airport and the discrepancy between landing fees when comparing the two airports.

With the new landing fees at Falcon Field a small plane will pay up to $11 more than if they were to land at Mesa Gateway Airport.

Butler responded to the comparison. He said Falcon Field airport is a city enterprise fund and Mesa Gateway is not.

“That’s not an apples to apples comparison because that (Mesa Gateway) is a separate legal body,” he said. “It is not an enterprise fund of the city and operates under separate jurisdiction and authority under state statute.”

Mike Sperry, a Mesa resident who has lived near the airport for the last five years, urged the council to vote yes on the proposed fees and increases to make the airport self-sustaining.

Sperry said in the past five years Falcon Field has continually become busier and with the increase in traffic comes an increase in spending needs.

Like golf courses that are run in Mesa, people who use the airport should be the ones paying for it to continue to run, Sperry said.

“We believe that the pilots that use the airport should be responsible for paying for the airport,” he said.

David Winstanley, a resident of Southeast Mesa also spoke in support of the new fees, stating that he believes any city enterprise should be self-sufficient.

“Falcon Field must pay for itself and not burden the general fund,” he said. “I recognize that some cities subsidize their airports because they believe them to be sufficiently valuable to spend citizen taxes to keep them open but I would argue that with two Mesa city airports, we cannot afford to do this.”

Ultimately, 20 community members spoke against the fees while 15 members spoke in support of the fees.

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