You can import a prop from the USA, with an FAA 8130-3. It is good enough for a G-reg, non-AOC ops.

Anyway, most props will come over with an 8130-4 - an Export CofA. Good enough for anything.

I once paid £11k for a prop with a JAA Form 1, which listed at $9k with an 8130-3.

" I think it is more a case of C of A aircraft have lost value "

I have a Cessna 150, early model, sound, needs an annual. First £6k buys it.
Pm me if interested.

( can't be doing with all this camo crap )

Quite - I still fail to see why the piece of paper for an identical item can add so much to the cost -in our case over 35%

The problem with the whole CAMO/Part M rigmarole is that a good number of maintanance organisations have used the opportunity to lift their customers skirts to pay for the record keeping that they should have been doing in the first place. They have also taken the opportunity to charge for it at engineering rates and not admin rates.

I blame the engineers to a large extent for their greed in seizing an opportunity to extract large sums of money and blame it on someone else.

But I think it will start to come home to roost. Shooting the goose that laid the golden egg was not a very smart move.

Lack of access to information :) :)

In GA, often the most appropriate saying is: in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is the king.

The other thing, of course, is that if you bought that $9k prop, the maintenance company is not going to make the margin supplying it (say £2k on a £11k supply) so their only income will be the installation labour at £50/hr or whatever.

One can make similar huge savings on avionics by importing from the USA - of the order of 40%, after allowing for VAT and shipping. But no major avionics shop will install the item, so this practice is limited to hands-on owners who work with a one-man installer who is probably happier not supplying the hardware as doing so would push him above the mandatory VAT threshold.

The downside is that there is no meaningful warranty on US imports, in that you cannot practically sue anybody. You can return the item... OTOH any warranty implementation in the UK tends to involve a flight to the installer's airfield, which (especially with hotels) is going to cost way more than whipping out the item and sending it back to the USA by DHL...

Bose-X
 

You have missed your calling in life with your talent for speaking with authority on a subject that you clearly know nothing about you should be writing for the Daily Mail.

The costs of setting up and maintaning the Part M approval are high, it is not just an admin job as you seem to think and the terms of the approval are clear on who should do and oversee the work, it is not something that can be done by someone that you picked up last week at the job centre.

We are required by the regulations to have another member of staff to carry out the EASA part M subpart G, this is why we have to charge the customer more, we are not ripping any one off, just covering the costs of doing the work that the law demands. The fact that in my opinion is total overkill is another matter, I cant do anything apart from make my views known to the CAA when I get the chance.

As always your comments on these forums are "good copy" but on this subject you are abusing your right to be wide of the mark.

Spoken like a true engineer!!!

The back room cost of you running your business should not be the burden of the customer. The cost of you keeping the records for you to operate within the regulation should not be the burden of the customer.

Notwithstanding my previous comment. There may be justification in the minds of some engineers in recovering those costs from there customers directly initially. However to keep coming back is inexcusable.

Care to explain how owners doing there own CAMO work outside of the controlled environment are managing if it is such a highly skilled task?

I don't have an issue with an engineer making an element of cost recovery. What I do have is an issue with them raping there customers. I had a friend who was charged 50hours of 'engineering' work to have his books checked for part M by the same engineering company that had being doing the work for 7 years. Makes me wonder what they hell they were doing for the previous 7 years?

Certainly each time I've spoken to CAA staff about it (actually its usually me pinning them in a corner and crying on their shoulder or shouting loudly at them), they express astonishment at the amount charged.

"Nothing to do with us", they say. "It shouldn't add any more work as the paperwork was being done already, it's just being done by a different part of the organisation".

So all in all, a fairly typical legislative screw-up with known, but unconsidered consequences.

We all told them what would happen but they ignored us. Then they brought in (late) the ELA1 exemption.

The French I note are setting up a grand-fathering right to continue a form of pilot maintenance with a licence for you to continue to maintain your own aircraft, if you have shown the ability to have done so previously.

Coming from a business point of view, I can see why an organisation might want to make an initial charge for a survey. but why do they need to keep on charging £700 ish. year in, year out. How much more work is the organisation doing than it was doing before? Even at £50 per.hour that's a lot of work for someone to keep the records straight. For an organisation who look after several aircraft of the same type, surely that's a money printing exercise?

I'm with bose-x on the assertion that I shouldn't be responsible for the back room costs of running their organisation. Imagine sending an invoice to a customer for £700 per.year for you as a supplier to keep up with Health And Safety legislation? If they need to put up their hourly rate to remain profitable, so be it. If I'm wrong then why is their wild variation in what is being charged?

I think that you guys are kidding yourselfs the customer always pays for the costs of a business......... that is just how it is, the differance is with part M the costs are clear and not hidden in the labour rate.

As to the extra costs for part M shall we start with the costs of re-jigging the worksheets, a weeks worth of time attending to extra CAA inspections (we also have to do the BCAR stuff as well) CAA charges, writing the new exposision etc etc etc.

All this takes time that should be used fixing customers aircraft......... and that is what brings the money in. If I do less "real work" & more paper pushing the costs have to be recoverd from a smaller customer base.

If took business advice from Bose-X and did not pass on the rising costs that I have then eventualy I would go out of business.

So the costs of part M are going to be passed on some how and some companys tweek the labour hours and some are honest about the costs of part M, If you think that you are getting Part M for only £300 then you are kidding yourself.

A&C - can the extra Part M paperwork be automated, using some suitable "IT" solution?

From my own perspective I'd already estimated the cost, based, as A & C has said, on the cost of employing new staff divided by the number of aircraft on their books.

The villains in this piece are EASA and the CAA in introducing the additional burden for no good reason.

It leads to some silly elements

Prior to Part M, I held and maintained the logbooks, my tech log had a countdown of hours to the 50 hour check and the annual.

Now I'm supposed to leave the books with the CAMO and to email them monthly the flight hours so they can update the logbooks and remind me the 50 hours are due. I tell them when I am going to do it, under pilot maintenance, so they send me worksheets. I send them back and get by return a release to service certificate.

In the past it was recorded once in the logbooks, but now we are funding the Royal Mail. I can't blame the CAMO but rather the way the CAA insist in their QA procedures.

Part M was designed along the assumption that we operate as airlines and have easy access to our maintenance organisations. A lot of us don't.

And if they ever get round (as they have said they want to do) to requiring the microlight and Permit fleet to operate under Part M rules, they'll have a riot on their hands.

Hang on, surely, having the MO writing up your flight hours in your logbooks (which are your property) from your emails, is somebody taking the p1ss...

Unless your plane has an AD whose applicability falls in between 50hr periods, what hours you fly between the 50hr checks is not the MO's business at all.

IMHO, of course :)

I am so glad to be N-reg. Write up all the logbooks myself, do the 50hr checks myself (with an A&P/IA who drives down) with some extras added, and for every Annual I can freely choose who does it. One of the best things is that if somebody doesn't do a job right I never need to use them again. Aviation maintenance is full of barrels, with aircraft owners bent over them.

I hold my logbooks. I complete them after the flight and when I get to 50hrs I let my CAMO know. They then let me know what is due and if anything fall between 50hr checks. A straight 50hr check I do myself. Anything that needs a lifed item replacing I take to them.

I do not pay any of the exorbitant charges being discussed here. My CAMO are honest and admit that there is little extra in the way of Part M that they should not be doing anyway.

There is no requirement for the CAMO to hold your log books.

Like I said, a lot of engineers have taken the opportunity to write there own interpretations of the rules and price accordingly. The cynical like myself would say that many are exploiting the situation.......

A&C you and I never going to agree on this, however don't think that I am stupid enough not to know the rules or have a lack of business knowledge to allow you to insult me into having the wool pulled over my eyes.

When we were talking to a number of potential CAMOs some took the line that if they were to be taking the responsibility for continued airworthiness, retaining the logbooks was part of the deal.

Again, it all comes down to the way the rules were interpreted.

And that was exactly the point I was making......
;)

robin

“And if they ever get round (as they have said they want to do) to requiring the microlight and Permit fleet to operate under Part M rules, they'll have a riot on their hands.”

Reference please!

Rod1

Robin. Sorry to say this, but you've been well and truly suckered.

Most of what you are complaining about is unnecessary. The maintenance firm we use, whilst fully approved, take a fairly cynical view of the whole CAMO bollocks and certainly in our case have chosen to completely ignore it, tick the extra boxes and carry on as normal.

The increased outlay is insignificant, given the overall cost of maintaining an aeroplane.

IIRC you were at the same meeting at Turweston where this was raised as an eventual aim.

There is ample paperwork to demonstrate that Annexe II is only a short-term measure. Gliders now fall under Part M, microlights were specifically mentioned and the LAA were discussing the possibility of becoming an approved organisation.

I've lost track of where things have gone since, though

Hang on, you can't do that. I mean, it has never been done before... I mean, it's not like the great majority of GA maintenance wasn't done that way as a default, was it??? :)

:ok::ok: