£100 for LARS?

[bcfc]

I caught the tail end of an article on Radio 4 this evening discussing the possible charging of boat owners for the costs of maintaining lighted buoys. Apparently, they cost £75m a year to maintain and currently, commercial shipping pays for this. It seems they have now successfully lobbied government to spread the cost of this with leisure & pleasure boats. The suggested charge is £100 a year.

The arguments for and against seems remarkably similar to those for GA paying extra for LARS. Unfair for commercials to pay all the cost, unfair on pleasure craft who only use a fraction of the service, pleasure craft pay enough through taxation, etc.

So it got me thinking that if they're looking at charging boat owners for buoys, will they turn their attention to GA for LARS next? Is mode S a precursor to this?

[IO540]

There's been much talk of this here and elsewhere.

One counter argument is that if we pay for LARS then it MUST be provided, whereas at present the ATCO can tell you to b****r off when the number of blips on his screen exceeds his trade union quota :O :O (only kidding about the trade union quotas)

Whereas buoys don't have that problem. And to be honest, the "GPS is good, GPS is bad" argument was done to death in sailing some time ago, and if sailors had to pay for buoys they would just not bother and use a GPS to ensure they don't hit anything. You don't have to register a boat, and no training is needed either!

I can't see how GA could possibly pay for LARS, or even a significant bit of the cost. There are nowhere near enough GA planes flying to raise any 7 figure amount.

Mode S has the possibility, implemented free of charge in the USA as a carrot to get GA to take up Mode S, to receive traffic info from ground based radars and display it in the aircraft. But not here.

[bfato]

I could be persuaded of the fairness of paying a share of LARS costs along with the commercials...

Once I too have a zero rate of duty on my fuel.

Well I can dream.

[A and C]

Good point about the duty rate on the fuel but GA has been providing pilots to the airlines FREE OF CHARGE for years.

Very few airlines now train pilots with free cadetships now and so a further charge would make it less attractive to pepole to pay to get a CPL/IR.

The cost to the airlines of £60,000 per new pilot would far exceed the small fee that they could get per aircraft by charging GA for the LARS service.

In the short term this may look good to the airlines and the Beanconter who introduces it will no doubt be flushed with his success but the beancounter will have moved on to fu** up another industry with his short term plans leaving the airline owners to pick up the pieces after the he is long gone.

[rustle]

I agree with your sentiments, A and C, but if no one is counting how will we know when there are enough beans :confused:

[High Wing Drifter]

It is a difficult one! In the case of boats, they are forced to use facilities only because of the existence of commercial traffic. So it seems underhand to now ask them to pay for the service that they are being told they must use.

Pretty much the same for GA. Without the huge amounts of controlled and mil airspace we wouldn't be channelled around at such a low level through such small gaps as to make LARS virtually a necessity.

Mode S is maybe a way forward? Surely it is not beyond the ability of a cottage engineer to come up with a simple and cheap TCAS like display linked to the Mode S transponder. If we are all going to have to have Mode S, then why not make it useful?

[IO540]

I have spoken to someone today who appears well connected in the European Mode S scene, and he reckons we will never get US-style traffic info via the Mode S back channel (ADS-B). If it comes, it will come via some sort of VHF link, and it's unlikely. What might come is weather radar upload (like they have in the USA) and that is a not-cheap service provided by commercial operators.

Does anyone know more?