The Park Service is responsible for conserving the scenery, the natural and historic objects, and the plants and wildlife in national park units, and for providing for the enjoyment of national park units in ways that leave them unimpaired for future generations. To accomplish its mission, the Park Service has a budget of about $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2006. The Park Service also has authority to collect and retain recreation fees from visitors, including entrance fees, amenity fees, and special permit fees, to be used primarily at the site where the fee was collected. In fiscal year 2005, the Park Service collected $146.8 million in visitor use fees. The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (the fees legislation) directed the Park Service to establish air tour fees by October 1, 1993. In the House Budget Committee’s report accompanying the fees legislation, the committee stated that tour operators generate their revenues by selling national park units as a destination and, therefore, a modest fee is a reasonable and justifiable means of addressing impacts they have on park unit resources and personnel. Under the fees legislation, the Park Service considers an air tour to be a flight that consists of one or more persons traveling on an itinerary that has been packaged, priced, or sold for leisure or recreational purposes by an organization that realizes financial gain through the provision of the service. The Park Service specifically excludes flights that are conducted solely as transportation between two points. The Park Service also determined that air tours that enter and exit the airspace over any of the applicable park units more than once during a single flight have to pay only one fee for that air tour. The Park Service implemented the fee requirement to apply whenever an air tour crosses the boundary of a qualifying park unit below specified altitudes at each of the park units: 12,000 feet above mean sea level at Haleakala and 5,000 feet above ground level at Hawaii Volcanoes. At Grand Canyon, the special federal aviation regulations establish altitude levels that vary with flight patterns. While the Park Service is the sole agency charged with collecting air tour fees, it has no authority to regulate or control the airspace over the park units; that is the sole jurisdiction of FAA. Congress directed FAA and the Park Service to work together to regulate air tours over park units in the National Parks Overflights Act of 1987 (Grand Canyon Act) and the National Parks Air Tour Management Act of 2000 (Air Tour Management Act). FAA’s mission is to provide the safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world. FAA is pursuing its mission with an annual budget of more than $13.8 billion in fiscal year 2006, of which about $7.7 million is estimated to be spent on air tour management. FAA has tasked its Western-Pacific Regional Office with working with the Park Service to implement these two acts. The Park Service established the Soundscapes Program Center in 2000 (now the Natural Sounds Program) primarily to work with FAA’s Western-Pacific Regional Office to develop air tour management plans under the two acts. The Natural Sounds Program’s budget for fiscal year 2006 is about $1.4 million, according to a program official. The Grand Canyon Act, which was enacted 6 years before the fees legislation, instructed FAA and the Park Service to prepare a management plan for air traffic over Grand Canyon. Due to the unusually high level of air tour activity over the canyon and some aircraft accidents in its vicinity—including a collision in June 1986 between an air tour airplane and a tour helicopter resulting in 25 deaths—the act directed the Park Service to submit recommendations to FAA concerning the actions necessary for the protection of resources and “… substantial restoration of the natural quiet and experience of the park and protection of public health and safety from adverse effects associated with aircraft overflight.” The act authorized FAA to issue regulations to implement the plan and authorized the Park Service to enforce the plan’s requirements under that agency’s own rules and regulations. To date, the two agencies have not developed an air tour management plan for Grand Canyon and are currently engaged in an alternative dispute resolution process with other stakeholders to develop the plan. However, after receiving recommendations from the Secretary of the Interior, as the Grand Canyon Act required, FAA revised special federal aviation regulations in June 1988 to regulate air traffic over Grand Canyon. These regulations, among other things, created flight-free zones, minimum flight altitudes, and specific flight paths for air tours; required air tour operators to report their air tours over Grand Canyon to FAA; and established procedures for setting a limit on the number of air tours allocated to operators over Grand Canyon. Subsequently, FAA issued a final rule in December 1996 to codify the special regulations and, in 2000, FAA set the allocations and issued special authority to the operators based on their level of air tour activity over Grand Canyon from May 1, 1997, to April 30, 1998. Since then, some air tour operators have transferred or sold their air tour allocations with FAA’s knowledge. FAA has changed the total number of allocations only once, in accordance with a recommendation from Interior to raise the regulated airspace “ceiling” above Grand Canyon from 14,500 feet to 18,000 feet above sea level; in February 2005, FAA granted 3,711 air tour allocations to one operator that had previously been unregulated, which increased the total number of air tour allocations for Grand Canyon to 93,971. The Air Tour Management Act, which was enacted 7 years after the fees legislation, arose from noise and safety concerns, like the Grand Canyon Act, but applies to all park units, with the exceptions of (1) Grand Canyon or tribal lands within or abutting that park unit, (2) any air tour operator flying over or near Lake Mead National Recreation Area solely as a transportation route to conduct an air tour over Grand Canyon, and (3) any land or waters in Alaska. The Air Tour Management Act also prohibits any air tours over Rocky Mountain National Park. This act directed FAA, in cooperation with the Park Service, to develop air tour management plans for national park units and abutting tribal lands where air tour operators apply for authority to conduct air tours. The Air Tour Management Act defines a “commercial air tour operation” (air tour) as any flight conducted for compensation or hire in a powered aircraft where a purpose of the flight is sightseeing over a national park unit, within one-half mile outside its boundary, or over an abutting tribal land. In the regulations implementing the Air Tour Management Act, FAA further defined air tours regulated under that act to include only flights below 5,000 feet above ground level. To implement the Air Tour Management Act, FAA and the Park Service signed an interagency memorandum of understanding that established procedures the two agencies would follow in coordinating the development of air tour management plans, including a provision that FAA would fund 60 percent of the cost of developing the plans, and the Park Service would fund 40 percent. This agreement describes the qualifying costs as external contractor costs required to produce the plans. These qualifying costs exclude staff salaries, benefits, and travel for agency personnel; agency equipment and supplies; and any costs for in-house contractors hired by either agency. In our January 2006 report on the Air Tour Management Act, we found, among other things, that the Park Service has not fulfilled its agreement with FAA to fund 40 percent of the cost of developing the air tour management plans. The Park Service had not requested or received any dedicated funding for the program until fiscal year 2006, when Congress provided $500,000 toward air tour management. For fiscal year 2007, the Park Service has requested $2.4 million for air tour management. Meanwhile, from fiscal years 2001 through 2005, FAA has funded 100 percent of the initial plans’ development through distinct budget appropriations totaling $27 million. Although the Park Service has, like FAA, contributed staff time to work on the development of air tour management plans, the cost of doing so does not count toward its 40 percent obligation, according to the agreement. Officials from both agencies told us that if the Park Service does not meet its obligation within the next 2 years, development of future air tour management plans may be hindered. The Park Service, relying largely on voluntary compliance, has collected some, but not all, air tour fees from air tour operators at Grand Canyon, Haleakala, and Hawaii Volcanoes. The Park Service established air tour fees at Grand Canyon, Haleakala, and Hawaii Volcanoes in March 1994. In order to collect payments from air tour operators, Park Service officials sent notice letters to relevant operators that air tours over these three park units would be subject to the fees beginning in March 1994. However, officials at Haleakala reached an informal agreement with air tour operators to not pay fees from 1994 through 2001 if operators followed a specific flight path. The voluntary agreement established terms such as air tour routes and no-fly areas and was signed by a group of operators and Park Service officials at Haleakala; it kept air tours out of the park unit’s boundary, except for one small corner of the park unit. However, when Haleakala acquired more land where the air tours were conducted, it negotiated a new voluntary agreement with operators, which included paying the $25 air tour fee. Thus, Haleakala did not begin charging air tour fees until January 2002. Haleakala officials believe that operators have been mostly compliant with the air tour fee as a result of the voluntary agreement. Grand Canyon and Hawaii Volcanoes requested each air tour operator to voluntarily report monthly to the appropriate park unit the number of air tours conducted, as well as to send a payment covering all appropriate $25 fees for that month. Under the fees legislation, only park units charging an admission fee—which could include per-person admission fees—may charge air tour fees. The Park Service has chosen to charge air tour fees only at park units that charge a per-vehicle admission fee.