Originally Posted by
chrisbl
Every aspect of GA is heavily subsidised by the US taxpayer from generous tax breaks on buying aircraft to subsidised publicly owned airports, minimal tax on fuel.
While it is certainly true that a significant cost of the FAA and some airports is supported (subsidised) by the general taxpayer and this helps with low landing fees and better weather services, the bulk of the savings in the US is down to volume and intrinsically lower costs for doing anything.
The approach to fuel taxation is an example. In the UK fuel is bad and must be punitively taxed, any retrenchment from this punitive taxation is a subsidy.
In the US, fuel is part of running an aircraft and is a good low transaction cost source of income for the FAA - and this type of tax is hypothecated (that is can not be used as a general source of revenue but only as a 'user fee' for the services used) so is reaonably limited in scale. The low marginal cost of flying means volume is much higher, fixed cost spread much lower, which means better infrastructure, which means more flying.