Originally Posted by
Mike Cross
I'd like to try and clear up some myths.
I attend meetings of the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, and the Members' Working Group of AOPA UK and can assure you that you are 100% wrong in the assertion that AOPA is heavily influenced by its corporate members. If you operate an aircraft administered by LAA or BMAA you heve to be a member and if you are a glider pilot you will be a member of a club that is affiliated to and pays dues to BGA. There is no such imperitive for membership of AOPA. Your opinions are usually well considered Ghengis but on this you're wrong. You're no doubt aware that I am also a member of LAA and have served on their National Council.
I'd prefer to think that we just see it differently - I've never owned an LAA aeroplane, but have been a member for many years because I have a very high regard for the work it does for the GA community as a whole. I have owned several aeroplanes, and found BMAA and LAA represent me well as an aircraft owner.
I'm not disputing that AOPA has done some good stuff - for example coming up with the concept of the NPPL and nursemaiding it to fruition. That said, when I used to sit on GACC it did seem to me that AOPA was never enthusiastic enough about changes that would reduce aviation costs at the expense of the training industry/its corporate members (why DO NPPL(SSEA) applicants have to pass the JAR exams instead of the simpler but perfectly aedequate microlight exams for example?)
But, I'm afraid that
in the UK I still believe that the BMAA/BGA/LAA are the big players and I will probably remain an LAA and BMAA member whatever I'm flying.
However, we have too many aviation organisations in the UK of which AOPA is just one. For aircraft classes we have competent single organisations in the BMAA, LAA, BGA and BBAC, for the professionals we have RAeS; RAeC seem to fulful a useful function in records and racing as well as co-ordinating all the sport flying organisations lobbying efforts - but I remain after that to be convinced that AOPA-UK, and the Air League aren't just splitting and duplicating effort; for that matter why do PPL/IR, Flying Farmers, Lawyers Flying Association, HAA exist other than as divisions of LAA. Why isn't GASCo a committee of the RAeC or RAeS? The voice of UK light aviation would be stronger with less organisations not more and UK-AOPA as a small national player would be better merging into a big national player whilst maintaining the international AOPA engagement.
(Whilst at it, I'd also merge BRA into LAA, BHAB and HCGB together, GAA and GAAC into RAeC, ALAE(1981) into RAeS like the previous ALAE, and force GASCo to actually pay attention to microlights given that BMAA is its single biggest funder. One result of this would be that a lot of people could free up time currently spent on committees and go flying instead, another would be organisations with vastly more clout than at present which can be used for all our benefit.)
G