G-RICH

I spoke too soon...from the IAOPA November 2012 newsletter...

Denmark moves towards lower fees and charges

After a long campaign by AOPA, Denmark is now on its way to restructuring its aviation fees, abolishing annual charges and replacing them with a ‘less than €1 safety charge’ on all passengers flying on larger aircraft. Jacob Pedersen of AOPA Denmark says: "If the law passes as proposed, there will be no annual fees for anything to do with aviation in Denmark – no annual fee for the pilot to hold a licence, no fee for an aircraft owner to own an aircraft, for a flight training organisation, maintenance facility or airline to exist. Instead, Denmark will finance its safety oversight with a safety fee for all passengers leaving on larger aircraft. The new proposal has the backing of the entire Danish aviation industry including GA, airports and the airlines and according to Jacob Pedersen it could mark a very important turning point both for GA and the entire Danish aviation sector.

Can you do "authority shopping" under EASA ?

18greens

Sounds very good. What is the downside to this and when can we have it?

Dan the weegie

There's absolutely no legitimate reason why you could not do such a thing. I was wondering when EU competition law would start to creep in to EASA. There's no reason why one CAA could compete for business with another CAA. This is very good news indeed.

FlyingOfficerKite

But how would it be administered in practice?

How would a pilot re-validate or renew ratings - and where?

Would other CAA Authorities charge £££s for re-validating a Danish licence/rating?

Would control be lost - or would Denmark become the Liberia of the aviation world with safety standards dropping, rather than being raised as is the perceived intent?

Will other EU countries offer the same incentives and regulate their own standards and become a Liberia of the aviation world themselves.

Of course it could be a good thing and the way forward.

I would be interested to hear from someone who has more of an idea about this than me?!

FOK

ZFT

They already do. If you are a non EASA land ATO applying for any form of on site audit you have to apply to EASA Cologne who then put your requirements out to some form of bidding process throughout EASA land. (The application forms do allow you to make pre arrangement requests with a specific NRA but to date we have failed with these requests)

It seems pot luck which NRA actually audits you.

Whopity

I have heard rumor that the UK CAA has lost so many inspectors that they no longer have any that meet the EASA experience requirement to conduct overseas inspections.

I guess its only a matter of time before the Meerkats
will be able to point you at the cheapest Authority

G-RICH

...that would be the ones which are not required to recover all of their costs from those that they regulate then.

I thought the CAA were on a recruitment drive for Inspectors, due to the impending number of ATOs to be inspected ?

Mickey Kaye

Well if they do employ anyone their long term prospects can't be that good.

The changes and charges that are due to be introduced will result in the majority of the current registered facilities being commercially none viable.

BillieBob

I think it's more to do with the number of inspectors leaving - they need a recruitment drive simply to maintain the current, inadequate numbers. My local club has been told to expect a 6 month wait before their application is even looked at.

mad_jock

You should see some of the new flight ops inspectors.

The last one I saw in training we could only guess that they had started taking cabin crew on with some of the rubbish that he was coming out with.

Cows getting bigger

Has anyone actually had an amendment to an approval recently? My TI just keeps telling me how busy he is and our request in in the queue.

Fit for purpose? I think not. Maybe it is time for the industry to get together and tell the CAA that they are failing. My business is suffering because they can not process applications in anything near a timely fashion.

mad_jock

The CAA must know they are failing.

The only way that anything is going to change is if Westminster gets involved

Whopity

They are involved; that's how we got into this mess!