Securing Growth and Robust Leadership in American Aviation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of my amendment No. 33, prohibiting changes to existing air tour management plans, or ATMPs.

This amendment would prohibit air tour management plans for national parks from completely banning air tour operations over the parks. Additionally, this amendment requires an air tour management plan to take into consideration the economic viability of commercial air tour operators.

While the ATMPs do real economic harm to the operators, it is also discriminatory against visitors who choose to experience the national parks by aerial sightseeing.

As we move past the pandemic years, many national parks saw their resources strained by the large number of visitors as the public began to travel again. Air tours are an important option for many visitors conducting a once-in-a-lifetime trip to see such famous landmarks.

Visitors taking advantage of air tours benefit by avoiding traffic, wait times, and walking trails that are inaccessible for the disabled or elderly, while reducing congestion and demand on park infrastructure.

The national parks should be available for all visitors to see. Limiting flights over the park unfairly limits the elderly, very young, disabled, and others to experience the park. Limiting flights over the parks is discriminating to those who might not have the resources, time, and physical ability to see them any other way.

Like ground-based tours, air tours are a valid part of our visitor experience, providing a unique window from which we can share our cultural, historical, and environmental sites with the world.

Air tours require no ground-based infrastructure at the park, which allows visitors accessibility without the need for roads, trails, signs, bathrooms, garbage cans, or other services.

By further restricting an already limited number of allowable air tours, we are reducing opportunities to access our parks in a way that leaves little to no environmental footprint or disturbance. Through carbon offset efforts and strict altitude requirements to control noise, just to name a few, air tour operators are working to ensure they have responsible stewardship of the Nation's parks.

Typically, operators pay a fee each time an air tour flies within the park boundary. The National Park Service collects hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue each year from these air tour flights. Air tours require no infrastructure, leaving the bulk of overflight fees to go toward those supporting services that benefit the public.

If overflight access is removed completely, it removes the ability to use new technologies like electric aircraft.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to support amendment No. 33, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chair, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Nehls).

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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Chair, having had these tour operators in Arizona, they have moved technology to quiet air, and you can barely hear these planes. You can be right next to them, these quiet air turbines, and you don't even hear them.

To say that they are disrupting to the environment, that just does not happen. From that standpoint, I urge everybody to vote for this amendment. It is a smart idea, and this is the way to go.

Mr. Chair, I urge everybody to vote for my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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