the money was supposed to come from redirecting the maintenance costs of the old systems that adsb would replace.
UU8,
I suggest you refer to some of the historic pprune threads of the time, they contained information from people very closely connected to the actual proposals being debated.
(1) No proposal was ever presented to the AsA Board about the subsidy proposal, let alone further up the food chain. What some of us do know, is that the Dept. of Finance quashed informal policy proposals for subsidy, long before it got to a policy position. Ask T-28D
(2) The airlines made it very very clear that any cost savings -, such as SSR non-replacement (they were replaced, at costs far below the figures being hurled around by the protagonists of "mandating" ADS-B),
would flow to the airlines in reduced airways charges.
As I said in a previous post post, there was no way the airlines were going to subsidies GA --- by accepting higher airways charges or any other form of money transfer. Remember, the airlines have long term contracts with AsA, and it is all about pricing.
In any event, the quantum of the proposed subsidies were way short of the real costs --- as Qantas found out with its -8 upgrades ---- the QF cost was about what FAA used in its cost/benefit analysis, and about 20+ times the AsA/CASA figure quoted for that type of aircraft.
Owners are now finding out, the hard way, that the realist figures of the time were correct --- all for zilch real and quantified benefit --- and a warm and fuzzy feeling does not qualify as a quantified benefit.
Tootle pip!!