National Parks Air Tour Fees: Effective Verification and Enforcement Are Needed to Improve Compliance

In our May 2006 report, we reported that the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 required the National Park Service to begin collecting fees from operators that conduct air tours over national park units that meet certain criteria. We found that, based on air tour operators' voluntary compliance, the Park Service had collected some, but not all, fees from air tour operators at Grand Canyon and two other national parks. For example, we found that 13 of the 21 operators conducting air tours over Grand Canyon underpaid their air tour fees for calendar years 2000 through 2003 by more than $1.5 million. We also found that the Park Service's ability to collect air tour fees was hindered by several factors, including that the Park Service could not verify air tour activity at Grand Canyon because the operators were required to report their air tours to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), but not to the Park Service. As a result, we recommended that FAA establish a procedure for operators at Grand Canyon to report their air tour activity simultaneously to the Park Service and FAA, or to ensure that FAA forwards the information to the Park Service, in order to improve compliance with air tour fee payments. Subsequently, both FAA and Park Service officials told us that FAA has regularly forwarded to the Park Service the air tour information that FAA receives from operators on a quarterly basis, starting with information for the second quarter of calendar year 2006.

In our May 2006 report, we reported that the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of 2000 directed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to prepare a report to Congress by October 2000 on the potential impacts of expanding air tours fees on air tour operators. Air tours fees are charged at only 3 of the 86 park units with air tours. We found that while FAA had prepared the report in January 2001, it had not been approved for submission to Congress. As a result, we recommended that FAA report to Congress on the effects that air tour fees are likely to have on air tour operators as required by the act. Since the original report had become outdated, officials with FAA's Office of Aviation Policy and Plans briefed Senator McCain's office, a primary sponsor of the act, in July 2007 on the contents of the report. According to an FAA official, the senator's office was satisfied with this outcome.