Q16 - A county airport, designed to

[mchuynh]

Why is the answer D and not B? Thanks!

[cyruswhittaker]

The argument concludes that the airport could not pay its operating expenses because the amount of money coming in from user fees was lower than expected. The first sentence states that the airport was going to cover its operating expenses in part from these user fees.

The question asks what must be true based on these facts.

(B) is unsupported. All we know is that the revenue from user fees was lower than expected. But notice that we cannot, with absolute certainty, infer that it is because the owners were "unwilling" to pay. Perhaps the owners were willing to pay, but during the time frame, there less users of the airport than initially projected, and hence the revenue was less.

Regardless of the number of possibilities, the reason for the less-than-expected revenue is never discussed, so (B) cannot be correct for a must be true question.

(D) on the other hand is fully supported. Since the user fees are only part of the funds for the operating expenses, and since the airport could not pay its operating expenses, it must be true that the sum of any other such sources of revenue must have been less than the operating expenses. If this were not true, then the airport could have covered its operating expenses.