Dec. 7—For the past few months, the Lebanon Municipal Airport has been exploring ways to become financially self-sustaining, ever since the Tennessee Department of Transportation pulled funding from airports statewide.

It was recently agreed to raise the hangar rental rates on site by 20%, but during the airport commission's regular-scheduled meeting last week, one local pilot pitched another idea.

Myron Lasater, of the Cherry Valley area, attended the meeting to share with the commission something he'd observed on multiple trips to outlying airports in neighboring states. The novelty of the fee is something that Lasater remarked he would never have even dreamed of seeing 10 years ago, but he indicated that it has become standard practice now.

"I've been going to a lot of outlying airports," Lasater said. "What I'm seeing across the board is paying a user fee for planes that land at each airport.

"If the city of Lebanon were to charge a set facility fee for the airport, it would be nothing out of the ordinary now."

Lasater cited a recent trip to the airport in Monroe County, Indiana, in the city of Bloomington.

" Monroe County sent the invoice, and I had to pay them directly," Lasater said.

Airport Commissioner Mike Russell added that if the plan is to benefit the airport, the money would need to be locked in, which means that it is earmarked specifically for and only for airport maintenance, upkeep and the like.

Lasater said that to his understanding, that is how the fees worked at the airports where he'd seen them. For Lasater, the charge makes sense in multiple ways.

"You've got people flying through here every day, so those fees would really add up," Lasater said.

Another question that Lasater asked was, "What's $150 for corporate operators to pay?"

In Lasater's mind, it's better to charge these corporate users to "offset costs from going after (the airport's) tenants."

A crucial element of Lasater's proposal is the application of this fee to transients, not to those who rent at the airport.

The $150 that Lasater suggested as a possible landing/user fee is actually well below the average that he typically pays to land at airports, a sum he estimated to be more like $475. He did acknowledge that that number was inflated by visits to very large airports that sometimes charge up to $1,000.

Such a move might make Lebanon Municipal Airport a less attractive draw for transient aircraft. As for the airport in Smyrna and the Murfreesboro Municipal Airport, there are currently no landing fees.

Airport Commissioner T.O. Cragwall acknowledged that such a move would involve "a lot of complexities," so he proposed putting it in the agenda for next month's meeting, to give the commission time to explore it's feasibility.

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