#16 - A county airport, designed to serve the needs of

[feo]

Hi there,

I had a question about problem 75 of chapter 2 in the LR Question Type Training text. The correct answer is listed as (D), whereas I think the correct answer may be (B). Answer (D) states: "The airport's operating expenses were greater than the revenue raised from sources other than the airport user fees for private planes." However, in the stimulus it states nothing about other sources of revenue, instead citing the airport has been "unable to pay its operating expenses because the revenue from user fees was lower than expected". I think this is an example of "Could be True" or "New Information" misdirection on the part of the test maker, but I am not sure.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Feo,

The correct is (D), as it is listed in the book

The issue of operating expenses and revenue is raised in the stimulus, and the statement in (D) falls under the "umbrella" of those ideas (the stimulus directly alludes to non-user-fee revenue by using the phrase "in part" in reference to user fees). When they talk about user fees, and then (D) talks about sources other than user fees, that is ok because total revenue = user fee revenue + non-user-fee revenue. It's the other side of the revenue equation here.

Because the user fees were lower than expected, and because the user fees were paying for part of the operating expenses, that means automatically that the "other" or non-user fee revenue had to be lower than the operating expenses (otherwise, roughly, they would have been able to pay the operating expenses). If that doesn't make total sense, let me know and I'll expand on it (the short expansion would be that if non-user-fee revenue was greater than operating expenses, then they wouldn't have needed the user fees to pay part of the operating expenses; but they did, so you know the non-user fee revenue wasn't enough to cover operating expenses).

The problem with (B) is that it is so specific about private owners being "unwilling" to pay. Maybe they were willing to pay it, but there were fewer private users than expected.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!

[linda.an]

Hello,

Could someone please explain why Answer C) should be eliminated?

Thank you.

[David Boyle]

Hello,

Could someone please explain why Answer C) should be eliminated?

Thank you.

Hello linda.an,

Answer C, about "private funds", is not provable at all. True, the stimulus does talk about "charging user fees to private aircraft using the airport", but that doesn't mean that "The airport's construction was financed exclusively by private funds" at all.

Hope this helps,
David

[dandelionsroar]

Hi
So I get why D is the answer, but when eliminating answers I struggled for a bit with A. I think it's because I mixed up approaches to different logical reasoning questions but I would like to clarify. One reason that I thought A might be right is that if most of the citizens don't use the airport then it could suggest there were not enough users to generate a total fee amount able to assist in paying the expenses. I ruled this out in the end because I thought it was too big of a leap to make in a MBT but I am not sure that is a good enough reason. Any thoughts would be appreciated:)

[Malila Robinson]

Hi dandelionsroar,
Your reasoning appears to be on the right track. It is unknown whether most of the citizens own private aircrafts, and it is also unknown whether the distance from an airport would be an indicator of whether a citizen would own an aircraft. These unknowns rule out Answer A for a MBT question.
Hope that helps!
-Malila

[tetsuya0129]

Hi, I had a minor confusion. How could the airport plan a charge of user fee when, in the second sentence, user fees were already collected (just lower than expected.) I thought "charging user fees to private aircraft owners" suggests that the user fee not required before. If the fee was, and is still, required, then how come the airport can plan to charge such a fee?

[KelseyWoods]

Hi tetsuya0129!

Notice that the first sentence is in past tense. The airport planned to cover its operating expenses by charging user fees. But this plan didn't work out because they didn't make as much from the user fees as they expected/planned.

So, essentially, at some point in the past they planned to cover operating expenses by charging user fees, they started charging the user fees, and then they found out that this plan didn't work so well because they didn't make as much revenue from user fees as they had planned.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey