CAA - be careful! (the sober edit)
Okay, here’s the sober edit.
As you can tell if you know yer ICAO airport designator codes, I am an Oxfordshire resident, so naturally want to sit my ATPL exams in Oxford, thereby avoiding extra travel and subsidence expenses.
To this end, I sent in my application form to the CAA in early February. A couple of days later I received a receipt for the sum of £718, taken from my credit card. I thought fair enough, an outrageous yet unavoidable fee nonetheless, and naturally assumed in lieu of anything to the contrary, the application was accepted as submitted.
2 months later, still hadn’t received any other documentation, other than the receipt so sent an email asking where I should go and at what time, etc.
Got a reply back a day or two later basically implying they’d lost my booking and now my venue of choice was fully booked. Offered Gatwick. Not good, because brief investigation shown only accommodation available £40 per night Travel Lodge, meaning the cost of living in the vicinity of Gatwick for a week would be approximately £250 – enough dosh to take Ms. Gin Slinger away for sex’n’alcohol weekender in Brussels, but that’s maybe something more of a Jet Blast topic.
Proceeded to phone CAA up to ‘discuss’ the situation, but response was most unhelpful. A sort of 'not the least bit interested and why are you wasting my time by calling' tone to the conversation. Not even a hint of an apology for the extra expense entailed by what is basically shoddy administration on their part. When I suggested they waive part of their charge to the value of the extra costs incurred because of their incompetence, well, you can guess the answer…
Other gripes:
SFT: an ‘approved’ school. The scope of approvals seem to go into such depth as documenting the correct method of handing out paper clips, yet fails to properly investigate the school’s financial stability. Rather more fundamentally important than the magic marker to white board ratio.
Mate(1): made to sit exams in Prestwick, when all the rest of his class got into their favoured venue of Gatwick. Apparently, the exam hall at Gatwick had loads of spaces where he could have sat. Similar to my case, the CAA couldn’t give a monkeys about the expense and inconvenience their over-priced, mediocre bureaucracy causes.
Mate (2): FAA PPL holder, which was converted into a JAA one. All was fine until he tried to an IMC rating. No RT licence – apparently not required for issue of the PPL in this circumstance, but required to add the IMC rating to it. Mate(2) was instructed to go away and take the RT practical, despite having 160 hrs and passing the IMC skills test. Fee most certainly wasn’t returned.
To sum up, relating to flight training and licencing, the CAA seems to have a parasitic relationship with the student pilot fraternity. Perhaps we need a regulator to regulate the regulator, or better still, simply dump CAA/JAA and place ourselves under the FAA sphere of influence. Not thought this through so no doubt you’ll find it easy to pick holes in this.
Last edited by Gin Slinger; 11th Apr 2002 at 23:20.