Want a LARS? It'll cost you!

[eyeinthesky]

I may be behind the drag curve here, but I have recently become aware of a report on a meeting with the DETR which discussed the problem of funding LARS in the future. At present LARS is funded by Airways charges which are only paid by all aircraft above 5.7 tonnes and IFR aircraft above 2 tonnes. The vast majority of LARS users fall outside these criteria and pay nothing for it. And so it should be, in my opinion!

As the major financiers of LARS, the airlines want to reduce the £1.6m bill and ways are being sought to find another way of funding. These revolve around the direct users paying for it.

Some proposals considered were:

1) A pay per flight charge (difficult to enforce and more costly to collect than it would earn).

2) A 'tax disc' per aircraft (unfair on those who don't use it)

3) An annual levy on each pilot's licence (c£50 p.a). (Unfair on infrequent users).

4) Using some of the duty on AVGAS to pay for it (requires Treasury approval).

The point was made that as units ins SE England get busier they will start to divest themselves of LARS services and this might be detrimental to safety.

Just thought I would raise it if it hasn't been already...

[Genghis the Engineer]

Well as a frequent user, who regularly gets a less than satisfactory LARS service, I'd go for (4). Let the tax we're paying go towards supporting the aviation infrastructure, rather than just vanishing into the exchequer as usual. Would put us in a stronger position to complain about service problem also!.

G

[FlyingForFun]

Yes, I'd also go for 4), especially since my aircraft runs on MoGas so I won't have to worry about the increase in the cost of AvGas that would no doubt come with this! :D

I really can't see any fair way of doing this. Many areas of the country aren't covered by LARS - presumably people who only fly locally in these areas won't have to pay? Or can we expect LARS coverage to be extended to the whole country to ensure that everyone is able to take advantage of the service they pay for?

FFF
----------

[The Ugly Fend Off]

Almost all LARS are provided by military controllers. The majority of the cost of providing these services is bourn by the RAF/MOD. LARS was originally introduced to provide RAF jets with a means to enter the UK low flying system. Subsequently it is used to keep fast pointy things away from puddle jumpers below 10 000 ft. As I understand it the RAF pays for some civil airfields to give a LARS service where possible. This service is not guarenteed though. It is dependent upon controller workload and if the workload is high then the first thing to go will be the FIS/RIS to a military jet or some C-152.

[bertiethebadger]

What if you ask for a Flight Information Service, not radar?

What if you go to an airfield under a MATZ or other control zone?

[The Ugly Fend Off]

An a/c receiving a FIS will still be one of the first ones to go if workload gets too great for the controller.

Most of the MATZ in the UK are not controlled airspace and therefore do not require any sort of service to enter them. Common sense dictates, however, that it would be a good idea to talk to the MATZ Director to ensure safety and collision avoidance but the best way to not hit anyone is to use the Mk 1 eyeball.

[matspart3]

My non-LARS (but radar equipped) unit provided a service to 9558 transitting aircraft during 2001 (I did the stats a few weeks back). For which, we received the princely sum of....****** all.

How about anyone wanting a LARS has to fly directly overhead the providing airfield and drop a fiver out the DV window:D

[PPRuNe Radar]

Almost all LARS are provided by military controllers. The majority of the cost of providing these services is bourn by the RAF/MOD.

???????????? ........ so where does the £3.8M (in 2001) raised by En Route charges and paid by the CAA to the MoD to provide LARS go then ???

[The Ugly Fend Off]

Not sure what the LARS budget is but I doubt that 3.8million covers much of it.

[Aussie Andy]

If the levy was only £50 it wouldn't be the end of the world, but
[list=a]
the principle is wrong because in my view the provision of LARs in class G is not there solely because WE puddle-jumpers need it; it is there as has been pointed out for the benefit of descending MIL and IFR. i.e. in areas where there is not a concentration of such (like in AIAA's) then we don't need it or ask for it. I've always thought of it as a reciprocal arrangement: we ask MIL nicely to enter MATZ and MIL kindly provide us an additional service, which enhances the safety of their own traffic.

I'll bet it doesn't stop at £50!
[/list=a]

While here though, I'd also like to say how much I appreciate the LARs service - especially from the likes of Brize & Farnborough folks who always provide an excellent service. When they are too busy they say so, which is fine. I think the funding problem is a serious one, so some solution must be found. However, adding further to the already outrageous fuel levy does not seem sensible or fair either.

[englishal]

Well this is a sad state of affairs isn't it ! After all, if the duty paid on Avgas goes to fund LARS then guess what...Fuel prices go up. AVGAS should be tax free in my opinion.

ATC should be paid for by the Government out of tax payers money. It should not be a privilege to get ATC but a right of any pilot, just the same as the traffic lights on your high street. Ok, the tax payer might complain, so why not reclaim some of the money from the airline industry in the form of landing taxes / navigation taxes. Oh and don't worry about the poor airlines having to foot the bill, they'll simply impose a 'navigation surcharge' onto each ticket sold.

What will happen is that PPLs will eventually be priced out of getting ATC services, leading to reduced safety for ALL air transport. What will happen then? Controlled airspace will grow, and then GA pilots will be forced to either get and pay for an ATC service or be grounded.

Bournemouth tower G-XXXX request LARS
G-XXXX Bournemouth Tower, Pass your credit card details

EA

:mad:

[Genghis the Engineer]

Al, don't know about you but I'm a taxpayer. What's surely in question is HOW we pay for the service, not WHETHER.

If the tax on my Avgas goes towards the infrastructure, like hopefully the tax on my Diesel goes towards the road infrastructure, I have no problem with that.

The only thing, frankly, that I have a problem with is any change to the system which adds significant complexity to the whole thing.

G

[Chilli Monster]

Just a couple of points:

The Ugly Fend Off -
Almost all LARS are provided by military controllers. The majority of the cost of providing these services is bourn by the RAF/MOD.
WRONG - I suggest you have a read of http://www.ais.org.uk/uk_aip/pdf/enr/2010603.pdf

There are 29 LARS units - 17 military and 12 Civil. Hardly constitutes "almost all" does it. In addition the cost is NOT borne by the MoD/RAF. It is paid for by the airlines / IFR operators as a payment from en-rte charges. MoD get a chunk of it (which goes into their coffers, not the units involved) as do the civil units involved.

An a/c receiving a FIS will still be one of the first ones to go if workload gets too great for the controller.
Should be wrong again (but the military work differently sometimes). FIS is the easiest service to provide as well as the lowest level of service that can be provided by an ATC unit. You may find yourself being downgraded from RIS to FIS, but that's as far as it should go.

Now - as to funding. I agree with most - option 4) (Using some of the duty on AVGAS to pay for it). Would get my vote too, as it makes the most sense. Duty on a litre of AVGAS at the moment is 27.34p - NONE of which goes towards aviation but into the common pot. Anyone know how much AVGAS is sold every year? Bet it would pay for a decent LARS service. We are in the position of putting in and getting nothing back for it (unlike sections of the community who put nothing in and get plenty back!) - this has GOT to change.

Lastly - englishal -
Bournemouth tower G-XXXX request LARS
Can't happen - it's illegal for a tower to provide a radar service ;)

CM

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

Who pays for lighthouses?

WWW

[englishal]

Boat owners don't pay any 'navigation' charges nor do they pay tax on 'red' diesel....Yet Trinity house or whoever it is still maintains the buoys and lights, and I assume they get their dosh from the Government...( and therefore you and me in the form of taxes).

EA;)

[slim_slag]

OK, I give up, what's the lighthouse analogy? Lighthouse would equal NDB. Who is saying we should pay when we tune into a NDB?

(Edited to remove VOR, as a lighthouse is definitely not equivalent to a VOR)

[TheFox]

Actually :)
At uni a rough description of how a vor worked used a lighthouse.
We were told to think of the vor as a lighthouse with a omni directional light on the top that went off when the uni directional light went through north, and if the uni directional light was rotating at 1 sec per degree you could calculate what bearing you were on, by measuring the time between the 2 lights.

[slim_slag]

Ah, I never knew that was how lighthouses worked, so I stand corrected. Edited - actually having thought about it, I don't!

So how does the sailor know the difference between the 'omni-directional' flash and the flash caused by the beam sweeping?

Edited - I don't think they can, because lighthouses don't work that way.

(I still don't see the analogy to paying for LARS)

[alphaalpha]

I have long felt that the 'see and be seen' principle is flawed since first, the time taken to complete an efficient scan through, say 270 degrees, is quite long. Then add time taken to eliminate blind spots (lift/lower a wing, weave the nose etc). Add some time taken on head-down tasks. Then consider how close another aircraft has to be before you have a realistic chance of seeing it. You will realise that see-and-be-seen is something of a lottery. The odds are improved greatly if you have the benefit of information from a LARS unit because you at least know where to look. And, in IMC, the benefits mutiply again.

So the worst thing to happen is to lose LARS. If we have to pay some thing extra for it, we should (providing we get the service in the most imprtant areas under the London TMA and in the low-level corridor between Manchester and Liverpool).

However, taxes pay for facilities to ensure safety on the roads and the individual road user does not pay according to the facilities he uses. The same principle can be applied to the skies. There is no need for part of the avgas duty to be specifically allocated to air safety any more than part of road petrol/diesel is allocated to road safety. It is enough to demonstrate that users of uncontrolled airspace mostly pay taxes.

It seems to me that the key issue is to demonstrate that LARS saves lives. How do you do that? Is it possible to compare the accident rate (or the Airprox rate) for accidents involving aircraft receiving a LARS service with those not receiving any service?

Regards

[what cessna?]

Can't work something out:

You're all quite happy to fly on a FIS with a FISO service near a busy GA aerodrome where traffic joining and leaving the circuit may not follow any particular 'standard' routes or levels. Or indeed fly over such places without calling the frequency at all, preferring to 'listen out' on the appropriate frequency.

Yet some above expect something for nothing...do you know exactly what you are asking for............totally free?

Although I agree in some areas (high military traffic levels etc) a radar service is a good idea as it benefits you and the rest of the area trying to get on with a set programme of tasks, there is still an small minority of pilots who seem not to know how to act responsibly.
I have had countless people request a service on lto turn down the volume in the headset because of all the noise generated by the chatter of traffic information being passed - result?
When I eventually get your attention the service is terminated and bye bye to the FIR FISO you go!

Remember that some ATC units have ONE PERSON doing the approach radar frequency. That means in civil terms one person is responsible for LARS, vectoring aircraft to final approach, co-ordinating with other ATC units by telephone and intercom. It also means that he/she can be dealing with considerable number of aircraft on one frequency at one time.

One departure to join airways can take two or more phone call before an aircraft is released. These calls are done by the bod you're asking to provide LARS.
If the controller feels that their function is being compromised they can limit the service or refuse it altogether.

The biggest problem here is - if you are paying a fee for your LARS and you get refused or get poor service - will you get a refund?

Nope

We all try to help everyone - but nothing in this world comes for free!

[foghorn]

Read the report here:

http://www.aviation.dtlr.gov.uk/lars/index.htm

To summarise:

The airlines who currently pay for LARS want to reduce their contribution. They think that GA should contribute.

The conclusion seems to be that the fairest way to allow GA to contribute to LARS would be for the Treasury to pay out of AVGAS duty revenues.

Other viable options are:

- An per-GA aircraft annual charge of £189 - 2289 per year, probably collected by increasing the radio license costs (presumably since non-radio a/c can't participate), or

- A £54 per PPL per annum license charge.

The need to expand the service was identified, however it was acknowledged that this would lead to the above charges becoming 'unacceptably large'.

No changes are to take place until the next review in 2004.

Get writing to your MPs now before we have yet more costs heaped upon us.

cheers!
foggy.

[foghorn]

By the way Trinity House is not funded by the Taxpayer - it is funded through light dues levied on ships calling at UK ports.

(culled from their website whilst doing research for an MP letter!)

[niknak]

Just a small, but very important point - the vast majority of airline operators don't use LARS because they fly inside controlled airspace, or use London Military until handed off to their desitnation airfield who then provide them with an approach radar service.

So, why should they make any contribution at all?

We don't get paid for a LARS service, ( I understand that the going rate is approximately £50K per year if you do), but we do have 28 airfields of varying sizes in a 30nm radius. Aside from our based and visiting operators, who vary from micro lights to B767s, we get calls from a/c transiting up to 45nm away, requesting a radar service because there's often no one else to talk to.
Like I say, we get diddley squat for doing this, and we provide the best service we can because it's good airmanship for the aircraft to call and we now have a "duty of care", but our own traffic comes first, so if you get short shrift, jsut remember that you're probaly number 23 in the queue!;)

[Genghis the Engineer]

So that's what it's about, the old "airlines feeling hard done by" thing.

At such times it is appropriate to point out to the daft airline beancounters, that...

- We pay punitive tax on fuel, they don't.
- GA is where virtually all of their pilots come from, if they push up the cost of GA their new pilots will arrive even more debt laden, and salaries will be pushed even further up to compensat.e
- The cost of one GA aircraft inadvertently entering Class A and causing an airline accident or diversion will cost more than several years woth of LARS service nationwide.
- The root of the industry that provides many of their skilled technical staff is also GA, see pilots!

Having said all that, lets be fair. Let Instrument fees, passenger taxes, etc. support the airline industry infrastructure. Let local and national taxes on airfields, and Avgas taxes support the GA infrastructure. I'm damned sure that both would win.

Does anybody actually know what the mismatch is between taxation of aviation, and what the government puts back into it?

G

[distaff_beancounter]

If my memory serves me right, duty on Avgas is set under the same hydo-carbons schedule, by Customs & Excise, as Four Star Petrol. Hence the duty is about the same amount per litre.

Well, we all know that successive Governemnets have claimed that duty on petrol has to be kept high, to fund the costs of roads.

So what the hell is the duty on Avgas meant to fund, if it is not something for the benefit if General Aviation ???? :mad:

[2Donkeys]

A different angle on this "how/why should GA pay" debate is enjoyed by those of us who fly GA types that exceed the 2 tonne Eurocontrol charges cutoff.

We already pay for every IFR flight we conduct, regardless of whether or not that flight enters controlled airspace, or indeed whether it ever talks to anybody at all on the ground. This includes, of course, pretty much every night flight, which in the UK at least, is by definition IFR, unless operating within a control zone.

Having paid for such a service, we are frequently denied it, by controllers who operate a "no ATSOCA" policy for their own reasons. Big offenders in this case include Luton and Thames, although Stansted in the past was equally restrictive. I appreciate that these units are not (no longer in some cases) part of LARS, but the general point remains that a service paid for is being denied, or made unavailable.

The message being sent to us, is that if we fly IFR, we might as well file an airways routing and get the full works, since we'll be charged for it anyway. Which provides additional controller workload, subjects us to slot delays on certain routes and denies us a flexibility in routing that GA enjoys today.

Hope this gives a slightly different perspective on the problem

[foghorn]

d_b,

Duty on AVGAS is actually a half of that on unleaded MOGAS - 27.34p per litre on AVGAS as opposed to a whopping 48.82p per litre on ordinary unleaded MOGAS.

Customs and Excise do not publish the revenue from AVGAS on the internet. Several questions are recorded in Hansard regardign this, however the response is always 'that can be found in the Hycrocarbon Oils factsheet in the house library' - they never respond with figures! Embarassed that we will latch on to any published figures?

Back of the fag packet calculation last night:

There are ~9,000 GA aircraft on the UK register.

Assume that all use AVGAS. Then assume that all fly 100 hours a year and burn 30 litres per hour (most likely massive under estimates I know)

Multiply them all up and you get ~£7.5 million per year revenue from AVGAS duty.

LARS in its current state costs £1.6 million per year.

Last night I wrote a letter to my MP regarding this. I'll post it here in case anyone wants to copy chunks to their MP.

cheers!
foggy.

[englishal]

So LARS costs £1.6m. You would have thought the airlines would be quite happy to pay for this in the interests of safety.

I don't mind paying £60 per year fee IF the government zero duty on AVGAS.......

Bloody rip off yet again.

EA

[englishal]

In fact, come to think of it, I'd be prepared to pay £300 per year up front IF I could have free landings, free navigation charges and no tax on AVGAS.

EA

[2Donkeys]

Foghorn

I don't disagree with your basic maths, but there are a couple of factors that you should take into account.

1) AVGAS is history (2005 IIRC) in less time than it will take the legislative process that you are describing to approve any reallocation of AVGAS duty revenue.

2) The Customs and Excise Website publishes extensive information relating to receipts from all forms of Hydrocarbon duty, both current and historic. You do not have to assume a conspiracy. The Hansard extracts you are thinking of are "placed" questions designed to allow the questioner to satisfy constituents and lobbyists, rather than to obtain answers whcih are already in the public domain. Avgas represents a sufficiently tiny take (certainly less than your estimate) that it constitutes only a miscellaneous total in the figures. It is almost certainly less (Net) than your estimate. The not insignificant amount of duty drawn back by pilots will be part of that. I would also hasard the guess that your figure of 9000 GA aircraft do not all do 100 hours a year, or anything like. Whilst club aircraft will be exceeding that amount (with increasing difficulty), the vast majority of aircraft in private ownership will, fall somewhat short of 100 hours.

3) There never has been, nor should there necessarily be a rule in the UK that excise revenue achieved in one area should be spent solely if at all in that area. Duties and Taxes in general are there for lots of reasons including the modifying of consumer behaviour. Something has to pay for those activities such as defence, healthcare, unemployment benefit and spin, which don't in themselves have a revenue side. Writing to your MP suggesting that Aviation taxes should be spent on aviation is barking up the wrong tree IMHO.

Extending Eurocontrol charges to cover a wider variety of flights, or levying annual flat-rate route charges for all aircraft below 2 tonnes is perhaps a more realistic option, and one being actively discussed I believe.

[Charlie32]

The danger of anecdote is that it can distort the truth. Anecdotally I have always received a superb sevice from Luton and Thames when transitting from the North to Biggin, whereas I have given up bothering with Essex. (I sometimes wonder if that is why they get so many infringements, because people have given up speaking to them!)

The bottom line here is that many Air traffic units are grossly overstretched and need better resourcing in the interest of safety for all

[foghorn]

2 donkeys,

Thanks for that. I'm sure that there are many shortcomings in my figures - I was trying to get a handle on orders of magnitude to see if funding £1.6 million pa from AVGAS duty was a sensible proposition.

My tongue was quite a long way inside my cheek with the conspiracy theory. I clearly didn't make that obvious enough in my post! I did in fact find a source of data on the web regarding AVGAS duty, however it was a pay site that cost £90! The Customs and Excise site was not very helpful in this respect as they do not break down the figures as far as AVGAS duty (no doubt because as you say the revenue in absolute terms is small)

I am also fully aware that hypothecation of taxes has few precedents in the UK (the privatisation windfall tax is the only one I can think of), I can think of no precedents of hypothecation in its strictest sense: re-investment to the direct benefit of the activities taxed.

However it is not unreasonable to compare our position to that of the motorist, who for VED and Fuel Duty, which is roughly comparable to our AVGAS duty (OK it's higher but comparable), get highway maintenance, road building, traffic control services (police and traffic lights), and often free on-road parking, paid for by the government.

GA gets very little in return for AVGAS duty since the government expects aviation activities to be on the whole self-funding. But that's not surprising given that we're a small, divided and not very vocal band of people.

Did you read the DTLR report I linked to? The main conclusion for funding was that some AVGAS duty should be hypothecated to pay for GA's share of LARS. However with the all-mighty Treasury having the veto on this, I doubt that it will happen. It will not stop me from doing my bit to raise awareness amongst our legislators, though.

Hence, the tone of my letter is to ask my MP to hold the DTLR and the Treasury to this report's recommendations. Surely not barking up the wrong tree? I'll post it later.

As you say, the end of leaded AVGAS will render this argument invalid. But will it be replaced by an LR AVGAS? What will the duty be on this (given that unleaded and LRP road fuel attracts duty in the 40-50p per litre region)? And if significant numbers of GA aircraft convert to turbo diesel, who's to say that Customs and Excise don't bring in a Red AVTUR for airlines / normal (dutiable) AVTUR for GA type system as with some other fuel users?

cheers!
foggy.

btw. the report considers the extension of Eurocontrol fees and dismisses it as possibly causing a negative effect on overall safety. I understand from the report that Eurocontrol themselves have put on hold indefinitely the introduction of fees to lower tonnage aircraft due to the difficulties in collection.

[englishal]

I still don't see why boat owners can get Red Diesel at 20p a litre, whether they are a commercial venture or out for a jolly, yet us lot are stung with taxes on AVGAS. I think there is a bit of the 'you fly therefore you must be rich' attitude towards GA.

EA

[alphaalpha]

I quote below from the June/July 2002 edition of 'Network,' the journal of PPL/IR Europe, (with due acknowledgement of source):

Intelligence Reports

"Evaporated Revenue

One reader was informed that the UK government obtained £12 million of revenue during 2001 from excise taxes on 100LL...."

Sorry, there is no indication of the source of the reader's information, but I will ask.

Regards

[t'aint natural]

I use LARS maybe half a dozen times a year.
I've given up asking Luton.
I know pilots who've never used LARS.
So how much a year? How much a litre on Avgas?

[slim_slag]

One reader was informed that the UK government obtained £12 million of revenue during 2001 from excise taxes on 100LL...."

Sorry, there is no indication of the source of the reader's information, but I will ask



Lords Written Answers, 1 Feb 2001 (http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/ld200001/ldhansrd/vo010201/text/10201w01.htm)


Lord Trefgarne asked Her Majesty's Government:
:What is the annual net revenue accruing to the Treasury in respect of the duty payable on aviation gasoline (AVGAS). [HL463]"

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: "The amount of excise duty received from AVGAS aviation can be found in the HM Customs & Excise Hydrocarbon Oils Factsheet, a copy of which is held in the Library. "


There is evasive government for you. Why not say "£xx million, and the figures are in the document". Why cannot the current Government just answer a straight question??????

And of course, I cannot find the cited document on the Internet.

[foghorn]

Ditto

I understand that Lord Trefgarne is one of the few aviators in the Lords.