PPR and Landing Fee Nonsense Again in Vegas for Superbowl

camorton said:
It's disappointing to see so many people on here who don't understand why these types of resources should not be allocated based on pure market-driven, supply and demand pricing.
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It’s perplexing to me that anybody wouldn’t understand that government distributes taxpayer funded services under laws and regulations, not market economics. There is indeed a reason for that, for example government is often a monopoly provider with no viable competition, as in this case, but regardless when regulations are violated the ultimate resolution is based on law, not market economics.
 
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Doc Holliday said:
So how many here are actually going to the Super Bowl?
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That’s the point. Plenty of people want to fly in to Las Vegas airports who are NOT participating in the Super Bowl activities. Why should they be forced to pay at a public, taxpayer funded facility to support a private event they have no interest in participating in?
 
Nick Geber said:
That’s the point. Plenty of people want to fly in to Las Vegas airports who are NOT participating in the Super Bowl activities. Why should they be forced to pay at a public, taxpayer funded facility to support a private event they have no interest in participating in?
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So your trip is being cancelled due to the Super Bowl in town?
 
Doc Holliday said:
And how is my question irrelevant? If you read my question, it wasn't addressed to you.
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Whether or not he or you or I are have trips cancelled does not alter the argument in any way. Therefore, it's irrelevant.
 
Salty said:
Whether or not he or you or I are have trips cancelled does not alter the argument in any way. Therefore, it's irrelevant.
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This is a discussion forum. Who appointed you moderator to decide on what and how an item can be discussed?
 
Salty said:
Whether or not he or you or I are have trips cancelled does not alter the argument in any way. Therefore, it's irrelevant.
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It’s relevant. The underlying question is how to fairly allocate a resource that cannot adjust to demand when the demand spikes on specific days. If nobody had to change plans due to the fees, what unfairness did they suffer? If someone with game tickets has to change plans because there is no room on the ramp due to high demand and low fees, why would that be fair or how would you suggest making it fair?
 
Doc Holliday said:
This is a discussion forum. Who appointed you moderator to decide on what and how an item can be discussed?
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Who appointed you moderator to decide I can’t say your question is irrelevant?
 
iamtheari said:
It’s relevant. The underlying question is how to fairly allocate a resource that cannot adjust to demand when the demand spikes on specific days. If nobody had to change plans due to the fees, what unfairness did they suffer? If someone with game tickets has to change plans because there is no room on the ramp due to high demand and low fees, why would that be fair or how would you suggest making it fair?
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So drinking and driving is ok as long as nobody gets hurt?
 
Doc Holliday said:
So your trip is being cancelled due to the Super Bowl in town?
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My trip is not canceled as I live here and have a tie down at HND. But what about those who are just visiting for non Super Bowl reasons and 1. Can’t afford the fees or 2. Can’t get a PPR spot. What about a guy flying a 50K C150? He’d have to pay $750 just to land.
 
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iamtheari said:
It’s relevant. The underlying question is how to fairly allocate a resource that cannot adjust to demand when the demand spikes on specific days. If nobody had to change plans due to the fees, what unfairness did they suffer? If someone with game tickets has to change plans because there is no room on the ramp due to high demand and low fees, why would that be fair or how would you suggest making it fair?
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Fair would be a blind lottery system.
 
Nick Geber said:
Fair would be a blind lottery system.
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You said that back on page 1, and I asked some questions about it because I had identified some places where a lottery would lead to the same unfair results except with a windfall to lucky lottery participants rather than local government, creating what amounts to a government handout to some people and the same basic outcome where airports are expensive to use on Super Bowl weekend. I didn't see anyone responding thoughtfully to those questions. It's post #27 above: https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/com...in-in-vegas-for-superbowl.145823/post-3477722

Salty said:
So drinking and driving is ok as long as nobody gets hurt?
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When you drink and drive, you create an unreasonable and unnecessary risk to yourself, your passengers, and other motorists, with increasingly unfair effects as to each group. Hurt or not, those people are all at a higher risk of you killing them when you are drinking and driving than when you are not. You also create an unnecessary drain on public services responding to the suicide-by-DUI single-vehicle crashes that you are statistically part of. We offset those forms of unfairness by prohibiting drunk driving regardless of actual harm caused in any specific instance. We also can, if we eliminate drunk driving through enforcement regardless of specific consequences, eliminate the unfairness. There is no reason that the roads have to include an unfair risk of you killing people by driving drunk.

In comparison, when an airport has a constant N possible uses and some M (greater than N) users, the airport (here, the local government) has no choice but to allocate the unfairness of M minus N users not being able to use the airport. Due to the zero elasticity of supply and high elasticity of demand for GA airport use, there are only three apparent ways to allocate the unfairness.

1. Raise prices until the demand curve hits the (flat) supply curve. This will generate a windfall for the the local government that can be put to use improving things locally. The unfairness will be carried by people who planned to use the airport. The people who change their plans will feel that the high fees are unfair. The people who willingly pay the higher fees will agree with them as they write their checks.

2. Keep prices at the same level and use some form of lottery, whether first-come-first-serve or drawing names out of a hat. This will generate a windfall for the lottery winners, who can either use the valuable Super Bowl weekend slot or sell it and generate a windfall. It is still unfair to people who have to change their plans because they do not want to pay the higher price to buy a slot on the secondary market and did not win a slot of their own. It is unfair to the positive for the lottery winners to get the valuable thing or cash windfall as a government handout. And it is additionally unfair to the local residents whose government gave valuable public resources away by lottery and let the lottery winners cash in.

3. Close all the airports that weekend. This is unfair to all of the people who wanted to fly in that weekend as well as to the local residents, but at least it has less of a class warfare tone.

None of those methods imposes any unfair treatment on anyone who had no plan or desire to fly to Vegas that weekend. I can use myself as an example. I do not reside in Clark County. I do not want to go to the Super Bowl. I do not want to go to Vegas when the Super Bowl is there. Whatever decision Clark County makes about how to allocate the unfairness inherent in GA airport use on Super Bowl weekend, I will not feel any effects whatsoever. Because of that, I lack the perspective to say definitively which solution is best for someone who actually has to bear some portion of the unfairness inherent in the decision.

At least for some people, whether you are personally affected by something is relevant to the weight to give to your opinion about the thing. That is why it is relevant to this discussion whether a person had plans to fly in that weekend, and irrelevant to the drunk driving discussion whether you actually hurt someone or not because, regardless of actual outcome, you have unfairly increased the risk to each person on the road the day you drive drunk.
 
And if you’re a Super Bowl fanboy…you deserve and are entitled to pay those prices for aviation parking.

They only charge that because idiots are willing to pay, simple. This is how bourgeois and elitist societies are created.
 
Nick Geber said:
My trip is not canceled as I live here and have a tie down at HND. But what about those who are just visiting for non Super Bowl reasons and 1. Can’t afford the fees or 2. Can’t get a PPR spot. What about a guy flying a 50K C150? He’d have to pay $750 just to land.
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Thanks for replying.

So how many people do you know had plans to fly in that one particular weekend and have had to cancel due to ramp fees?
 
Doc Holliday said:
Thanks for replying.

So how many people do you know had plans to fly in that one particular weekend and have had to cancel due to ramp fees?
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How many people do you know that have been killed because someone flew with a condition they didn't report on their medical?

That doesn't matter in exactly the same ways.
 
Salty said:
How many people do you know that have been killed because someone flew with a condition they didn't report on their medical?

That doesn't matter in exactly the same
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Salty said:
How many people do you know that have been killed because someone flew with a condition they didn't report on their medical?

That doesn't matter in exactly the same ways.
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Why do you feel the need to answer for someone else?
 
camorton said:
Because this discussion is about access to publicly funded, federal government-controlled resources. It's disappointing to see so many people on here who don't understand why these types of resources should not be allocated based on pure market-driven, supply and demand pricing.

Maybe when they roll up to Yellowstone with the family in the car and the ranger says, "Sorry, busy weekend, $1,000 admission please!"

C.
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The alternative being a lottery system? First come, first served? Both of those may result in "no admission please" so which is better? I suppose it depends on how badly you want to visit jellystone. :)

Most pilots I know are alpha types and will work to secure a thing they want. Money seems a pretty easy way to tilt the scales in one's favor.

Sorry that alternate viewpoints disappoint you in a discussion.
 
camorton said:
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Maybe when they roll up to Yellowstone with the family in the car and the ranger says, "Sorry, busy weekend, $1,000 admission please!"

C.
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Been there lately? Several popular NPS sites have been reservation only entry during peak periods since at least 2021. Now, when you roll up, they just say sorry, no reservation, no entry.

Let’s not even discuss the backcountry access lotteries that have been around forever, severely limiting access, or YELL’s disastrous Alternating License Plate entry limitations.
 
Personally, I'm fine with lottery (non-transferable) or first come first served. To me, 'early bird gets the worm' is better than 'Clark county soaks the rich, shafts the little guy, and provides no additional benefit to anyone.'

C.
 
iamtheari said:
Keep prices at the same level and use some form of lottery, whether first-come-first-serve or drawing names out of a hat. This will generate a windfall for the lottery winners, who can either use the valuable Super Bowl weekend slot or sell it and generate a windfall. It is still unfair to people who have to change their plans because they do not want to pay the higher price to buy a slot on the secondary market and did not win a slot of their own. It is unfair to the positive for the lottery winners to get the valuable thing or cash windfall as a government handout. And it is additionally unfair to the local residents whose government gave valuable public resources away by lottery and let the lottery winners cash in
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Resale of first-come first-served slots that might legitimately apply to limit airport movements on occasion is precluded by them being assigned to an aircraft tail number.

The airport resources in Las Vegas are not local, they are funded by the Federal taxpayer and the local taxpayer has no investment or legitimate stake in the outcome of imposing very high landing fees.

FAA policy precludes the application of market based pricing in distribution of the monopoly airport resource that FAA created. The airport management can only collect their costs, and when they took the money they signed up to follow FAA policy. This is not an issue of philosophy, its an issue of law. The reason local government signs up in this way is because the FAA grants are much, much more that they could ever extract from the market. FAA funds to that level because infrastructure investments promote the broader general economy in ways that are not reflected by the airport balance sheet, and the local economy wins. Better for the locals too that airport management not threaten the FAA gravy train through their opportunistic greed.

If you want to see how airports work if they are run as local businesses, not infrastructure, go to Europe where I originally came from. GA as transportation is just about dead there, for this very reason.
 
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iamtheari said:
In the end, market forces will allocate the scarce resources. It’s not a question of whether they are a good way. It’s a question of who gets the windfall when there is effectively zero elasticity of supply and a short-term higher demand.
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Agree mostly, but I would say there IS some elasticity in that there are folks in this thread saying "I won't go at that price". Yet, the ramps will be chock-a-block with planes, so it seems like they are charging the correct price, or potentially still undercharging.

I wish that more things were market priced and then use the money to build more. (ie, the unlimited wait for city hangars in many areas).
 
Tusayan said:
Resale of first-come first-served slots that might legitimately apply to limit airport movements on a few weekends a year is precluded by them being assigned to an aircraft tail number.
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That's easy to turn into a game. Netjets or a similar large operator enters all their tail numbers a year in advance and gets to cash in by having a monopoly on GA seats going in. You and I still don't get to fly our bugsmashers into the area that weekend, a private business still gets a windfall, and POA still gets to have an argument about how to solve the problem.

Leaving that game aside, how would you decide how many of each size of aircraft to grant reservations to? Same pool for Cessna 150s and Gulfstream Vs? What about if someone cancels? Does the reservation fee get refunded? Does the slot go to the next plane in line, possibly the next plane of that size class?
 
iamtheari said:
how would you decide how many of each size of aircraft to grant reservations to? Same pool for Cessna 150s and Gulfstream Vs? What about if someone cancels? Does the reservation fee get refunded? Does the slot go to the next plane in line, possibly the next plane of that size class?
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Yes, same pool for all aircraft. This is about landing, not parking.

No reservation fee needed, just an agreement that the you'll pay a reasonable fee if your N-number doesn't use its slot or turn it in by a certain date.

If a slot is released it becomes available. This isn't rocket science.

It may in fact be that while slots are compliant with FAA policy to control volume of movements, in actuality no slot system or anything else is needed to limit volume during these events. The reservation system was invented by Clark County to facilitate collecting an illegitimate windfall, and may have had very little to do with practical need.

The FAA investigation that should and I suppose is occurring should start by asking "why does any of this additional protocol actually need to exist" and go from there. Obviously the Clark County motivation for all of it is to make 'free' money utilizing Federally funded public airports.
 
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The same silly landing fee was in place for NBAA. I arrived in HND, and there was honestly plenty of room. Space was not constrained.
 
Looks like fees might have gotten a little better...

www.avweb.com

PPR Returns To Vegas For Super Bowl, Costs From $0 to $14,729 - AVweb

Las Vegas area airports will again be charging special event fees and implementing a Prior Permission Required (PPR) program for the Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11. Clark County airports, including Harry Reid International Airport (KLAS), Henderson Executive Airport (KHND) and North Las Vegas...
www.avweb.com www.avweb.com
 
These are same fees I posted on the original post.
 
An updated video regarding why this is against the grant assurances, along with actual airport utilization stats.

 
Business jets leaving Las Vegas after the superbowl

 
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