PRICING AND RAMP TRANSPARENCY - KNOW BEFORE YOU GO

AOPA has been contacted by thousands of pilots that have been surprised by a number of ramp fees.  These include tie-down fees, facility fees, infrastructure fees, access fees, security fees, handling fees, and even fees for being picked up by a taxi at an FBO. Most of the complaints are pointed to large chain FBOs or where an FBO has a monopoly position.  Pilots state they are often charged for services they don’t ask for or receive. The general aviation community believes all pilots of both piston and turbine aircraft should have online access to FBO fee information so they can make informed pre-flight planning decisions.

Most FBOs do a great job of serving the general aviation community by balancing their need for profitability with the need to provide reasonable prices. However, there are many FBOs, especially those owned by large chain companies, like Signature Flight Support and Atlantic Aviation, which continue to circumvent the intent of transparency by requiring a GA turbine operator to join a loyalty program before disclosing fees and prices. Meanwhile, other large FBO chains provide prices and fees for both piston and turbine aircraft, so we know it can be done. AOPA is working with industry and community leaders to encourage pricing and ramp transparency at our nation’s public-use airports with the following initiatives:

1. The Know Before You Go best practices for FBOs encourages voluntarily industry compliance to make ramp fees transparent and available online.
2. AOPA Airport Directory to make it effortless for FBOs to update their ramp fees and make them available to the flying public.
3. Adoption of standardized GA Parking Labels on airport diagrams.

For current fuel prices and the reported fees at FBOs that choose to report them, you can use the iFlight Planner for AOPA and AOPA Airport Directory.

We will continue to update this page with progress, articles, videos and discussion topics as more develops on this critical issue to general aviation. If you have encountered an issue with hidden FBO ramp fees, please report it here.