PPL Licence…...£160 for this??
 

Having applied for my PPL and after a 4 week wait I received a package back from the CAA today, this contained my log book and some folded up pieces of paper labelled "Flight Crew Licence", now apologies if this is a stupid question but is this my actual PPL licence? I've never seen a licence so wasn't sure what to expect but is this what the CAA are charging £160 for??
Thanks
Gav

There should be a poo brown plastic wallet to put your bits of paper in - license, rating, RT and medical.

It's £10 for the paperwork and £150 towards the CAA Christmas party....

I can't yet answer your question as I am waiting for mine... but 4 weeks??!!

What the hell happened to 10 days?

The CAA have already extracted their money from me, so if it takes another 3 weeks to arrive I won't be happy.. I would like to get up flying before 'summer' ends properly (not that it really started)


Steve

In a nutshell, yes! That hard earned licence and all you get is a brown bit of plastic and some sheets of paper! Oh and the plastic falls to bits after a year!

Only £160? you got off lightly.

For the European Luscombe Rally at the beginning of the month we needed an exemption from the CAA to allow us to drop flour bombs.

The exemption is a single page standard letter from the CAA detailing the date time and place of the event and the name of the person in charge. It is accompanied by a single sheet of guidelines.

The cost? A snip at 200 quid!:mad:

Difficult to see how you could viably run such an event. If you charged two quid a try that's 100 runs down the runway just to get the CAA fee back, the neighbours would have something to say about that!

Got my paper licences and poo coloured wallet exactly 3 weeks to the day after it was posted.
Impressed with the quality........NOT

I paid £135.50 for a UK licence
 

.....For my TV. Doesn't seem to make it work any better though :-(

And if you apply to the US FAA to get a (free) FAA PPL on the back of your UK PPL the UK CAA will charge you £39-00 to, basically, send a reply e-mail to Oklahama City confirming your basic details!!

Daylight robbery.

And every 5 years the CAA charge you another £63.00 and you don't even get a new brown wallet.

DGG

:*

Aw diddums. What did you expect? A gold embossed and calligraphic scroll on best quality parchment? A licence is a licence [OED entry] not a certificate - the Yanks give those.
Grow up:ugh:
Mz

Who rattled your cage prissy missy, I stated the quality was poor for the money, it is.

What the reference to a certificate versus licence has to do with my post I dont know, I received my PPL and Radio licence at the same time, no mention of certificates in there.

Did I expect anything else..no, I knew what I was going to get now Foxtrot Oscar somewhere else and grow up yourself.

It's endemic in the UK
 

Shops that only have 1 person serving at the busiest times, Bars that are 3 people deep on a Friday night, Bus drivers that don't carry change and get uppity if you give them a fiver, the list goes on and on.

£160 for a few bits of paper and a plastic brown wallet, that you have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for ? It's not that different from the whole UK's ability to deliver p*ss poor service.

Compare that with HK where I got to within one finger of beer left and the waitress was over asking if I wanted another one.....

You're Not Wrong
 

Even in the good old US a Walmart, Circuit City or Home Depot has an assitant who tracks you down, asks if they can help .. appears to take genuine great delight in doing so and asks you to have a nice day.

Does that happen in ASDA, Currys or B & Q ?

Yesterday Mrs DG (who wants us to have a new state of the art home cordless phone and answering machuine) spent 10 minutes in Currys in Bluewater just trying to find an assistant.

DGG

wait til you go commercial!!!

...at £69.- a pop for each one of the 14 exams... plus license issue (only £169?), plus IR issue, plus class 1 medical...
But apparently you get a blue low quality plastic wallet though... which is why I do it :cool:
Having said that, all in all I am satisfied with the service I get from the CAA, except for the fees of course.

They did the same to me, only I'd paid even more when they left out my (blue in this case) wallet and just sent me a sheaf of papers. My first UK licence too, so it confused me.

Then they took 3 weeks to even bother to look at my renewal, I had to go down in the end to pick it up as it is my livelihood, and charged me over £100 for that dreadful service! How can it take 3 weeks to look up details of my existing licence and print them out on new sheets of paper, and how can it cost so much (albeit with a new plastic wallet)? This should be a two-day turnaround, with some delay in busy periods, not a two-week turnaround with even more delay in busy periods. It should cost around £10-20 to administer. It is a rip off.

As a former FSO with the CAA, not FCL I hasten to add, I would very gently remind those whose angst has been vented that it is mid-August and despite the vagaries of our UK climate is it the holiday season.

I have no doubt that the number of staff in FCL who deal with licence issue are much reduced at this time.

Professional licences and ratings do take some priority over private since the ability to earn a living is involved.

As to the question of charges. Like that wonderful machiavellian character of a politician on TV was fond of saying - "I hear what you say..... but I could not possibly comment.............!!!!!!!!!!!!!!".

Cheers,

Trapper 69
:mad:

PS - Just got my monthly CAA pension advice slip today. Usual time too. Thank the Lord they are not on holiday.

I believe it says somewhere that the licence isn't valid without photographic ID. I wouldn't have thought it would be too difficult to work a photograph in there somewhere, like the drivers licence for example.

There's your answer then, you have to pay for their holidays. And their lunch breaks (ring em up at lunchtime go on try it!). And their subsidised canteen and the shiny grey building at Wick Gat. Honestly they do make your £160 go a long way!