Dear Airlines: Stop Pocketing Tax Holiday Savings

July 27, 2011

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2 min read

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I know this may fall on deaf ears, but I'd like to urge the airlines to pass along the savings from not collecting FAA taxes onto consumers. I'm writing this post on a Delta flight that I was able to rebook for a $40 savings the day the taxes stopped being collected. That certainly helps considering the sky-high coach one way JFK-LAX fare was $440 - after the little bit of tax help!

Since then, Delta and most other major airlines - with the exception of Alaska and Spirit - have raised fares the amount of the foregone taxes and are now pocketing the money themselves.

Luckily, I'm not the only one who feels that this is a little messed up, though most senators want that money to be saved and put towards the FAA, like it's supposed to be.

West Virginia Democrat John D. Rockefeller IV, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said he was “deeply perplexed” that most airlines had decided to keep the money.

“We urge the nation’s airlines to put all of the profits that they are making from the lapse of the aviation taxes into an escrow account so that they can be transferred back into the Airport and Airway Trust Fund when Congress reinstates the taxes,” Rockefeller and fellow Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington said Tuesday in a letter to Richard Anderson, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines Inc. and chairman of the Air Transport Association.

What are your thoughts? Should the airlines get a little revenue love because of this weird government issue? Or should it go to passengers or to the FAA?

I vote for passengers!