Originally Posted by
nowherespecial
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.
My 5c worth anyway.
I agree that it may not be apples for apples in those statistics but the difference in the two charts above is stark. I am fairly sure pilot and engineering costs cannot be included in the "generating income" costs even if part of a contract with an aviation provider and why would the charity do so anyway as it's to their disadvantage.
The cost to deliver one aircraft in those two organisations is roughly the same - £4 million per airframe.
I absolutely support the work of the delivery side of the Air Ambulance sector, but some of the shenanigans mentioned above about pilots paying for their own training and the appalling ineffectiveness of that one particular organsiation should be highlighted to the people making donations. It is a gross outlier across the sector (go ahead, check my working) and has been doing as badly for years (it only put 19% of it's expenditure into charitable activities one year).