Excessive CAA charges
 

Having the usual moan with a pilot/engineer friend of mine about the excessive charges the CAA charge for doing the most minor piece pf paper work got us thinking, if the banks are getting taken to court over excessive fees is there a case for applying that logic to the CAA?

Any flying lawyer types out there?

Regards

From the CAA Website, if you disagree write to the Chairman

over £700 to issue a cpl ? over £900 to get a new engineering type rating added? hardly value for money! sharks!

Now go and look up "tautology" in a dictionary and tell me why the word "Excessive" is surplus to requirements in the title of this thread! ;)

UAV,

The lead article in the August edition of Flight Training News talks about the latest charging proposals to come out of the CAA's Finance Advisory Committee. It appears that the CAA are in serious financial difficulty, not least because they are required to make a 6% profit each year to pay back a government loan which was presumably taken out to pay for the Belgrano.

According to the article, the CAA are proposing a 140% increase for auditing FTOs providing integrated training - just a tad more than inflation !

At the end of the article it says that the British Business and General Aviation Association (BBGA) are looking for examples of excessive or unnecessary CAA charges which they can use in their battle to get regulatory costs brought down. They are asking for examples to be forwarded to them at info @ bbga.aero so you may wish to drop them a line.

Cheers, jez

£26750 per annum for approval of a parachuting organisation?

That's enough to make you want to jump out of an aeroplane without a parachute!

That is for the approval of a person authorised to approve parachuting operations not for the approval of an organisation which is £2745.00

Precisely, Bose. So if you are to approve a parachuting organisation, you have to pay the CAA £26750 per annum for the authorisation.

Does that strike you as being too cheap, then?

Just correcting your assertion that it cost £26750 for a parachute organisation to operate.

As approval of parachute organisations is either a CAA staff ops officer or the BPA role, you would surmise that there are not many people around who hold this position.

But hey, what would I know.........

One way this cost recovery issue may play out is that - the CAA stick largely to their guns; less pilots, engineers, instructors and organisations apply for or renew their approvals; so less activity across the industry results.

From an hazily remembered economics lesson, isn't this the Law of Diminishing Returns?

As the CAA is controlled from above on pricing, and don't forget it was British Airways and others complaining to the last review about cross subsidy that lies at the root of the hyper increases for GA, their ability to price to the market is limited.

If flying training falls out of licensing requirements for aerodromes, if new starters for PPL and CPL training don't pick up and the N reg issue isn't resolved then increased income will have to come from Pax revenues. As all economic indicators show nothing like the once forecast doubling of mppa by 20 whatever and the likely drift to rail for more and more domestic trips, there's no gold rush here to swell the CAA's coffers.

A bleak outlook made even bleaker when one looks at EASA's ideas of pricing.

Sir George Cayley

competition
 

hi all. the trouble is comepetition. i've just had to pay (ok small in comparison to others) £176.00 for the pleasure of processing my license, having recently passed my PPL skills test. it was personally handed in to the gatwick licensing dept last tuesday. 10-day turnaround they say? do i have my licence yet? nnnnnnope.

but its ok i'll just go to the caa's competitors, who charge £150.00 and have a 5-day turnaround. oh no wait i can't there are no competitors.

i believe the expression is "over a barrell".

cheers,