Air BP SPIN
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Air BP SPIN
In the latest Australian Aviation magazine daily PR release there is an advert from Air BP.
The advert tells how Air BP has moved heaven and earth to prevent the wrong fuel getting into the wrong tanks. It has happened in the past and will no doubt happen again. Just like cars with Unleaded and Diesel.
The Spin Doctor has spent a lot of time massaging words to make up the advert. What is not said is that I for one find Air BP fuel a pain in not having a BP card and fronting up to an airport where there is a BP fuelling station but that only takes a BP Card.
One time I wrote to Air BP asking why they did not make provision for MC and Visa cards to get fuel. The reply was a no change. The letter in reply spun a lot of words but at the end it was that Air BP would not consider having provision for credit cards to be used at Air BP fuel stations.
My view is that some people, without Air BP cards actually avoid fuel stops that have only Air BP for Av Gas. I have been to Ceduna and Broken Hill but had to wait for a person to turn up and add a call out fee to my fuel purchase. I have also heard the expression 'Sorry, having dinner right now, will come out later' Great!
Come on BP. You can do better. Having Visa and MC to be able to pay for Av Gas might also increase the sale of fuel at those Air BP stations!
R
The advert tells how Air BP has moved heaven and earth to prevent the wrong fuel getting into the wrong tanks. It has happened in the past and will no doubt happen again. Just like cars with Unleaded and Diesel.
The Spin Doctor has spent a lot of time massaging words to make up the advert. What is not said is that I for one find Air BP fuel a pain in not having a BP card and fronting up to an airport where there is a BP fuelling station but that only takes a BP Card.
One time I wrote to Air BP asking why they did not make provision for MC and Visa cards to get fuel. The reply was a no change. The letter in reply spun a lot of words but at the end it was that Air BP would not consider having provision for credit cards to be used at Air BP fuel stations.
My view is that some people, without Air BP cards actually avoid fuel stops that have only Air BP for Av Gas. I have been to Ceduna and Broken Hill but had to wait for a person to turn up and add a call out fee to my fuel purchase. I have also heard the expression 'Sorry, having dinner right now, will come out later' Great!
Come on BP. You can do better. Having Visa and MC to be able to pay for Av Gas might also increase the sale of fuel at those Air BP stations!
R
In keeping up with the competition, Air BP have been steadily replacing their old card readers with newer ones, but given the (seemingly ever-changing) number of sites around the country and the remoteness of some of them, at the speed of an Oil Company it takes a while to complete the entire roll-out. Check the ERSA first - that way you won't get caught out.
In the latest Australian Aviation magazine daily PR release there is an advert from Air BP.
The advert tells how Air BP has moved heaven and earth to prevent the wrong fuel getting into the wrong tanks. It has happened in the past and will no doubt happen again. Just like cars with Unleaded and Diesel.
The Spin Doctor has spent a lot of time massaging words to make up the advert. What is not said is that I for one find Air BP fuel a pain in not having a BP card and fronting up to an airport where there is a BP fuelling station but that only takes a BP Card.
One time I wrote to Air BP asking why they did not make provision for MC and Visa cards to get fuel. The reply was a no change. The letter in reply spun a lot of words but at the end it was that Air BP would not consider having provision for credit cards to be used at Air BP fuel stations.
My view is that some people, without Air BP cards actually avoid fuel stops that have only Air BP for Av Gas. I have been to Ceduna and Broken Hill but had to wait for a person to turn up and add a call out fee to my fuel purchase. I have also heard the expression 'Sorry, having dinner right now, will come out later' Great!
Come on BP. You can do better. Having Visa and MC to be able to pay for Av Gas might also increase the sale of fuel at those Air BP stations!
R
The advert tells how Air BP has moved heaven and earth to prevent the wrong fuel getting into the wrong tanks. It has happened in the past and will no doubt happen again. Just like cars with Unleaded and Diesel.
The Spin Doctor has spent a lot of time massaging words to make up the advert. What is not said is that I for one find Air BP fuel a pain in not having a BP card and fronting up to an airport where there is a BP fuelling station but that only takes a BP Card.
One time I wrote to Air BP asking why they did not make provision for MC and Visa cards to get fuel. The reply was a no change. The letter in reply spun a lot of words but at the end it was that Air BP would not consider having provision for credit cards to be used at Air BP fuel stations.
My view is that some people, without Air BP cards actually avoid fuel stops that have only Air BP for Av Gas. I have been to Ceduna and Broken Hill but had to wait for a person to turn up and add a call out fee to my fuel purchase. I have also heard the expression 'Sorry, having dinner right now, will come out later' Great!
Come on BP. You can do better. Having Visa and MC to be able to pay for Av Gas might also increase the sale of fuel at those Air BP stations!
R
DF.
Man Bilong Balus long PNG
Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Looking forward to returning to Japan soon but in the meantime continuing the never ending search for a bad bottle of Red!
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I probably would have been there for another 10 years! 
Though I dunno if the later crop of Pilots would have kept up the supply of Minties and Fruitcake to you!
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Aside from sales & marketing, there are a few big advantages to using Carnet cards. From the Oil Company's perspective, it simplifies payment tracking allowing them to issue monthly invoices for payment, reducing paperwork. For the pilot it means (a) no credit card transaction fees (more paperwork) each time you top up and (b) I believe most of the OPTs can store the transaction if comms is down for whatever reason, meaning you're less likely to get stranded at some remote airstrip simply because it doesn't recognise your credit card.. or the local 4G service just isn't that great that day. I also find that getting one monthly fuel bill regardless of where you fill up does help with the flying budget.
Interestingly enough, I notice at least one independent has started accepting Air BP and WFS cards. Nice! https://www.skyfuel.com.au/aviation-fuel-cards/
Last time I bothered trying, Air BP required a $10,000 bank guarantee before they would reissue a carnet card to me. Gerry111 contacted them and asked whether $10,000 cash deposited in their account would do. Nope. That's a special kind of stupid.
It would be good if - as suggested earlier in this thread - Air BP has been dragged into the 21st century by enabling credit card use at their bowsers. It would be nice to go back to Broken Hill. The last time I refuelled there I had to pay a 20 cents-per-litre surcharge because I didn't have an Air BP card. Ceduna is a pain.
It would be good if - as suggested earlier in this thread - Air BP has been dragged into the 21st century by enabling credit card use at their bowsers. It would be nice to go back to Broken Hill. The last time I refuelled there I had to pay a 20 cents-per-litre surcharge because I didn't have an Air BP card. Ceduna is a pain.
DF.
..but they're an oil company - not a bank.Fortunately, they've changed all that and now only require direct debit details and approval for a credit check (perhaps they've had runners? or was that you??) https://www.bp.com/en_au/australia/h...rnet-card.html
It would be good if - as suggested earlier in this thread - Air BP has been dragged into the 21st century by enabling credit card use at their bowsers. It would be nice to go back to Broken Hill. The last time I refuelled there I had to pay a 20 cents-per-litre surcharge because I didn't have an Air BP card. Ceduna is a pain.
But you're quite right - in an emergency it would be nice to know you could use credit card as a backup. The newer OPTs all support credit cards - it's the phone connections that don't always co-operate. Maybe next time you head out bush you could "borrow" someone else's BP card before you leave? Just in case.
Fortunately, they've changed all that and now only require direct debit details and approval for a credit check.
The only place I currently visit for fuel where there's only an Air BP bowser is YSWH. The very friendly local aero club folk run the bowser and can be telephoned ahead of arrival to confirm someone will be there and the bowser is working.
LB, its a little more complicated than that. To "pre authorise" an amount not only requires a working internet connection but a pretty fancy legal agreement between BP and the credit provider as well as some very heavy and expensive security built into the bowser control equipment - and that is also subject to other legal agreements.
First off is banking and privacy laws - the banks absolutely and positively will NOT tell anyone else, electronic systems included, what your credit, debit or account balances are, period. That was the first stumbling block when I was involved in this circa 1987.
OK, so we fix that by pre authorisation - the credit provider says yes or no. Even for that you need legal agreements and strict software protocols to prevent the bowser being used for "fishing" to determine balances and to prevent the amount being accessible to someone with bowser or line access.
But now you want to use your credit card and by definition also your pin - at perhaps 3 am in say Boulia? (eftpos accepted). Your bowser requires a (very) secure control head. The objective being that it should be virtually impossible for the machine to be internally "bugged". it is no secret anymore that your pin is encrypted inside the pinpad so your card details do not exist in an unencrypted state anywhere in the machine. there are again legal agreements about possession and secure maintenance of the machine.
All this isn't simple and it costs money.
First off is banking and privacy laws - the banks absolutely and positively will NOT tell anyone else, electronic systems included, what your credit, debit or account balances are, period. That was the first stumbling block when I was involved in this circa 1987.
OK, so we fix that by pre authorisation - the credit provider says yes or no. Even for that you need legal agreements and strict software protocols to prevent the bowser being used for "fishing" to determine balances and to prevent the amount being accessible to someone with bowser or line access.
But now you want to use your credit card and by definition also your pin - at perhaps 3 am in say Boulia? (eftpos accepted). Your bowser requires a (very) secure control head. The objective being that it should be virtually impossible for the machine to be internally "bugged". it is no secret anymore that your pin is encrypted inside the pinpad so your card details do not exist in an unencrypted state anywhere in the machine. there are again legal agreements about possession and secure maintenance of the machine.
All this isn't simple and it costs money.
Yet...all of that complexity has been resolved by Air BP's competitors and those credit card pre-authorisations go on all day every day at (non Air BP) bowsers in some pretty remote places.
Given the patent commercial silliness in Air BP's position when I last bothered trying to deal with them, I'm hardly surprised Air BP hasn't achieved the same outcomes (assuming they're even trying). In negotiating legal agreements with the credit providers, Air BP would probably press for nonsensical provisions which are laughed at by the credit providers (as we did when they wouldn't accept $10,000 cash in their account instead of insisting on the credit check and bank guarantee rigmarole which would have achieved nearly the same outcome but with more embuggerance to Air BP if they ever had to draw on the guarantee).
It may not be achievable at a tiny number of extraordinarily remote places (yet, due cost), but that's irrelevant to the places where it is already achievable. There is, for example, no reasonable technical or commercial or logistical impediment to having a credit card bowser at YBHI and YCDU.
Given the patent commercial silliness in Air BP's position when I last bothered trying to deal with them, I'm hardly surprised Air BP hasn't achieved the same outcomes (assuming they're even trying). In negotiating legal agreements with the credit providers, Air BP would probably press for nonsensical provisions which are laughed at by the credit providers (as we did when they wouldn't accept $10,000 cash in their account instead of insisting on the credit check and bank guarantee rigmarole which would have achieved nearly the same outcome but with more embuggerance to Air BP if they ever had to draw on the guarantee).
It may not be achievable at a tiny number of extraordinarily remote places (yet, due cost), but that's irrelevant to the places where it is already achievable. There is, for example, no reasonable technical or commercial or logistical impediment to having a credit card bowser at YBHI and YCDU.
Last edited by Lead Balloon; 26th Feb 2023 at 20:11.
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LB you are no doubt correct about YBHI. In theory it should be possible to install a new bowser that takes credit cards. I have no idea what is driving BP although I imagine it could be purely commercial - they would have to to pay a percentage of their jet and Avgas revenue to Visa and Mastercard. There may be other charges as well. There could also be all sorts of silliness involved.
Why not just sign up with Skyfuel via SAAA and they give you everything you need plus a discount?
Having said that, I always get a warm feeling at YBHI taking my two jerricans to the servo by the roundabout near the airport and filling up with UL95 for about a dollar a litre less than Avgas.
Why not just sign up with Skyfuel via SAAA and they give you everything you need plus a discount?
Having said that, I always get a warm feeling at YBHI taking my two jerricans to the servo by the roundabout near the airport and filling up with UL95 for about a dollar a litre less than Avgas.
LB you are no doubt correct about YBHI. In theory it should be possible to install a new bowser that takes credit cards. I have no idea what is driving BP although I imagine it could be purely commercial - they would have to to pay a percentage of their jet and Avgas revenue to Visa and Mastercard. There may be other charges as well. There could also be all sorts of silliness involved.
And, yep, it's purely commercial. Notice at the bigger/busier airports (eg. YMMB) Air BP, Viva and WSP all take credit card. As you point out, the credit card transaction fees have to be paid by somebody and it sure as anything ain't the customer! As I understand it, the key reason the small players are "happy" to wear the transaction costs at tiny out-of-the-way places with tiny throughput is that it gives them an edge on the big boys who simply can't be stuffed feeding the small fish in the ocean.
As I did to get my BP card https://www.skyfuel.com.au/aviation-fuel-cards/
Incidentally, Colin’s BP at Moorabbin provides great service and a good process for correct delivery.
Incidentally, Colin’s BP at Moorabbin provides great service and a good process for correct delivery.