b"34 ISM | TXKGENERAL AVIATION At TXK, the fixed base operator collects ramp and fuel fees. I Without city or county funding, Kissimmee Gateway relies ondont get any of that, Mehrlich points out. Who then pays? The user fees to pay for operating expenses and infrastructurelocal community through the general fund. improvements. Better Tracking MethodsIt's one thing to charge airport fees and quite another to collect them. The exercise of tracking aircraft, finding the owners and sending them invoices can be difficult for general aviation airports with small staffs. Sometimes, it is too time-consuming for the relatively small dollar amounts involved.Mehrlichs previous experience assessing fees at a general aviation airport in California involved daily searches on FlightAware, one by one, based on the tail numbers of aircraft that landed the night before. Information on some aircraft would be blocked, and some would be identified only by call signs. Checking the FAA tail number database was also hit or miss because some aircraft in question had been sold. In other cases, ownership was cloaked under an LLC, or the aircraft was in the process of being purchased, so a bank owned it. All this time is spent on one aircraft, and you may have a landing fee thats $2 per 1,000 poundsso you send them a bill for like $30, he recalls.These days, TXK uses PLANEPASS from Vector Airport Systems, which leverages ADS-B data and other technologies to automatically capture aircraft information, assess landing fees and collect the associated revenue. The airport partnered with Vector One challenge has been a significant lack of understandingin July 2020, a few months after Mehrlich accepted his position about the nature of ISMs financial operations. In particular,there. However, he was familiar with PLANEPASS having used it Germolus sees the need to educate customers about the differentat Dallas Love Field (DAL).roles of aviation taxes, government grants and user fees.OneWhen TXK implemented the system, it was set up for non-group [taxes and grants] provides funds for a one-time expenditure,airline traffic only because a payment method was already in place such as constructing a runway.The other [user fees] keeps thatfor commercial aircraft. Mehrlich also limited its use to aircraft same runway maintained and available for safe, secure and efficientover 8,000 lbs. because he did not want to have any impact on use for the next 20 years, he explains. the general aviation community, including flight schools and pilots Paul Mehrlich, A.A.E., ACE, executivepracticing touch-and-go landings. Just because we have Vector director of Aviation at Texarkana Regionaldoesnt mean you will get an invoice, says Mehrlich. Small GA Airport (TXK) in Arkansas, acknowledges theguys never get charged a landing fee.predicament Germolus is in. As a non-hubThe system is still relatively new at ISM, which doesnt have airport with about 17,000 annual operations,any commercial traffic. After entering an agreement with Vector TXK receives entitlement payments of $1in December 2024, the Florida airport announced the impending million per year. Meanwhile, general aviationintroduction of landing fees, and started collecting them onairports, like ISM, receive about $150,000 perPAUL MEHRLICH Feb. 1, 2025. The monitoring, invoicing and coordination has yearand that is just for capital projects, notgone very well, Germolus reports, while also acknowledging standard operating and maintenance costs, Mehrlich notes.immediate blowback from aircraft owners when the assessments began. Some pilots argued that ADS-B technology was supposed to be used for safety and nothing else; others objected to a third party such as Vector profiting as a collection agency. Germolus countered by informing aircraft operators that the technology provides the airport with many benefits, including accurate aircraft counts, alerts about overdue Planning aircraft, law enforcement assistance and a method for DELTA AIRPORT Engineering addressing noise complaints. Moreover, he explained that CONSULTANTS, INC. EnvironmentalIndustry Analysis using PLANEPASS is the most economical and efficient www.deltaairport.com Program Management way for ISM to collect fees.Other methods that rely onConstruction AdministrationBusiness & Financial PlanningJuly | August 2025AirportImprovement.com"