PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - UK Air Ambulances having it off???
View Single Post
Old 29th Mar 2024, 05:40
  #66 (permalink)  
nowherespecial
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: nowhere special
Posts: 470
Received 9 Likes on 5 Posts
Caution, alternative take on the charity sector.

I have no affinity or allegiance for or to any EMS operators, for profit or non profit, in the UK but I think there are several other ways of looking at these statistics and it's important to know exactly what is loaded into the 'admin' and what is loaded into the 'charitable activities' parts of these pie charts.

Some of these charities will load all their 'costs' into the admin, potentially including pilot and AME salaries, doctors. The 'money spent on charitable activities' could be direct flight costs only including fuel, landing fees, pbh etc. I'm not excusing anyone but I think it's important to have the full picture and realistic expectations as I doubt very much if the pie charts are as simple as 'office based' vs 'aircrew/ engineers'. I also doubt these stats are reported the same way by each charity.

Where I do take some issue with the comments made above is the rather odd insistence that somehow the 'support staff' should somehow work for free or minimal compensation because it's a charity. I would be curious to know how various posters expect these people to feed themselves and pay rent/ mortgages? IUsing the 'it's a charity' logic, should the flying staff also work for free? While I understand that the donating public should know how much of their donated money gets spent directly, around 50% is fairly good by charity standards. Feel free to look up the UN and large charities like Children in Need as a comparison. Fundamentally, if you want credible, qualified, full time and competent staff, you have to pay for that. What's the alternative? Pilot's doing the CEO job part time and engineers shaking buckets at the station on down time?

Using the London AA as the provided example, it's a 16m GBP revenue business and the top earners (likely medical director and CEO) are making 140k tops. That's a North Sea S-92 captain's salary. Running an organisation with 205 staff (including more than half who do work for free) is a very responsible job. I think 140k is actually quite low personally for that level of responsibility. I guarantee the Medical Director can earn significantly more in private practice or the NHS.

Read the financials at the end. Great insight: https://register-of-charities.charit...nNumber=801013


My 5c worth anyway.

Last edited by nowherespecial; 29th Mar 2024 at 05:51. Reason: Add link for London AA Financial Report.
nowherespecial is offline  
The following users liked this post: