FAA tells Santa Monica Airport to hold off on fees. (Up Front).

A plan by Santa Monica Airport officials to institute a progressive landing fee schedule charging larger corporate jets much higher rates than smaller personal craft has prompted federal aviation officials to intervene and request the fees be put on hold.

The fees, scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1, would raise $500,000 a year that airport officials say is needed to maintain the airport's 5,000-foot-long runway and adjoining taxiways. Under the sliding fee schedule, a single-engine Citation aircraft would pay $2.90 per landing, while a larger Gulfstream IV business jet would pay $343 per landing.

The plan upset commercial aviation groups, and last week the National Business Aviation Association filed a request with the Federal Aviation Administration in hopes of preventing the landing fees from taking effect. The group maintains the plan would force large corporate and charter jets out of Santa Monica Airport.

"The purported justification for this patently discriminatory fee schedule--that this is necessary to apportion pavement maintenance costs--simply is not credible," the NBAA said in its filing with the FAA. "The purpose and effect of the new fee schedule is to force larger jet aircraft to use airports other than Santa Monica, with weight as the latest proxy for unfounded noise concerns."

On July 2, the FAA sent a letter asking the airport to hold off on its plans until it finishes conducting a review. Airport manager Robert Trimborn said he received the letter late last week and didn't know how long the FAA review would take.

The agency intervened last year after a similar request from the NBAA over the airport's decision to exclude large aircraft from landing altogether. That policy is now on hold pending the outcome of the FAA's investigation.

Heavy use

Along with Van Nuys Airport, which is operated by Los Angeles World Airports, the independent Santa Monica Airport has long had one of the heaviest concentrations of corporate jets among general aviation airports. That's due in large part to its proximity to the entertainment and dealmaking centers of the Westside.

Of about 151,500 takeoffs and landings from Santa Monica Airport last year, about 16,000 were by jet aircraft. Trimbom said that about half of the jets were large enough to be in the top tier of landing fees, including the Gulfstream IV jets.

The NBAA views the fee schedule as the continuation of an attempt that airport officials made last August to ban these large jet aircraft from the airport outright and also as part of an overall strategy of the city to eventually close down the airport altogether.

Santa Monica Airport is surrounded by residential neighborhoods that have fought for years to limit flights. Besides noise complaints, there have also been concerns over safety, especially the potential for crashes.

Trimbom denied the new landing fees had anything to do with the ban on large aircraft or safety concerns.

"The simple fact is that larger aircraft cause more damage over the long term to the runway and taxiway pavement," Trimborn said.

Unlike many general aviation airports, Santa Monica Airport does not accept federal grants for runway maintenance, Trimborn said.

Only charter aircraft pay landing fees, a policy Trimborn said has proven difficult to enforce since it's hard to distinguish charter flights from corporate flights without asking the pilots.

Earlier this year, airport officials hired Pavement Consultants Inc. to do a study to find a more reliable way of raising funds to maintain the pavement.

"We asked them to develop a pay-as-you-go fee program based on the damage factor of heavier aircraft and this is what they came up with," Trimbom said.

But the general aviation industry sees the proposed fees as another attempt to restrict jet aircraft from the airport. Such attempts, dating to the 1970s, violate the city's 1984 agreement with the FAA not to discriminate against any types of aircraft, they say.

Trimborn said he doubted that the new fees would divert much traffic to other airports.

However, FAA spokesman Donn Walker said that in similar cases, courts have ruled that imposing fees on one class of aircraft and not another can be considered discriminatory.

"That's one of the major issues we'll be looking at," Walker said. "On the surface, it appears they have instituted quite a sliding fee scale."