Senior Aviation/Austin Aviation
 

Rotorheads,

Can you guys give your opinion on the following website senior aviation cheapest pplh cheapest cplh save up to 40% on helicopter lessons and flight training

I think it is dubious.... but need some convincing.....

Please help...

Can you Guys have a look at this website??
 

When you click terms and conditions, it says contact us. Never a good thing.

Any organisation worth its salt, will show everything up front.

The aircraft in the picture is registered to a lifting company in the midlands. Just all doesn't check out

Just to clarify,

I think it is a con... Thoughts????

I agree, think
its a fraud..

There are no actual contact details. Just a couple of email addresses and freephone numbers. Any proper business is going to have an address that you can actually visit.

There are photos of two aircraft on the site, G-CHAP and G-DFOX. G-INFO lists the contact details for the owners of both aircraft. If you do want to follow this up, it might be worth contacting the aircraft owners to find out if they are connected to this 'operation' in any way.

The bit about "save 40%" is supposedly the ability to claim back 20% VAT and 20% income tax, because you apparently have your own aviation business.

Hmmmm...:=

Domain name:
senioraviation.co.uk

Registrant:
senior aviation

Registrant type:
UK Individual

Registrant's address:
5 Claverley
Lower Beobridge
Wolverhampton
Staffordshire
WV5 7AH
United Kingdom

Personally I think it is very shady, but you cannot stop these guys from advertising a product to sell to joe public, and sell them the "dream".
Any of you guys remember one of the first consultant company's selling the "dream" who were called PLH. They had a good one of telling people give them a load of money and they can get cheap discounts at the flying schools, and that they knew so many people in the industry they could get you a job tomorrow.
After they went bust taking a lot of people's money with them, because in the end they did not know anyone in the industry accept for the people they had put through.
So sell the dream and take their cash, should work well in this economy:}

Fluffy

The domain name address is not formatted correctly. Quick check on post code shows it should be 5 Lower Beobridge, Claverley ...etc... and not the other way round. Wonder if that is intentional to put you off the scent?

All fine and dandy till hmrc decide they don't like it....

Assuming its 'legitimate', you'd be better of doing this yourself, it's nothing complicated.

Much better off getting the scheme approved by your accountant etc so you can claim against their insurance when it all goes wrong :}

Seeing as there is a freephone number why don't you just call them up and ask all the questions you want?

Be very careful!

You can only reclaim VAT if you are a VAT registered business (or self employed) and can convince HMRC that you need the qualification in legitimate pursuit of your business. In other words, a PPL by itself would not qualify. If you are doing a CPL, HMRC would probably need a letter from a prospective employer saying he would employ you when qualified. Be sure that HMRC will scrutinise that very carefully!

You can only claim back income tax by off setting it against future earnings. In other words, you would have to declare a loss in your business for the first year or two while you are doing the training, and then use that to offset against earnings in the future (but only from earnings that result from flying), and you can only do this for (I think) 5 years. See HMRC Help sheet 227.

Not a tax expert, but an educated opinion from running my own business for many years. Take professional advice!

senior av
 

just to clear a few pointers from the above, I own senior av, the address at 5 lower beobridge was my address when i registered the domain, if you google it you will see its 5 minutes down the road from wolverhampton airport where I also set up a flight school called austin aviation which is were g-chap comes into it, which is managed by us for the owner carl,feel free to go to austin aviation website and you will see me on the meet the team page, as for g-fox it was based at wolverhampton.we started senior av because we had students coming in asking about the vat, and because i'd claimed my tax and vat when i did my training we stared to help our students at the school,Im a bit long in the tooth but im doing my cplh ground school with phill croucher at captonline, we also purchase his superb study books and phil is also aware I set the school up with alan austin.

P.s no mystery guys, its just something new and we are here to help pilots and students from "any school in the uk" also we don't need a business address but if any guys want to meet me at our wolverhampton airfield austin aviation offices i'd be more than happy to do so.

did my training with robert power heliflght.

Jason Senior. "jerrysenior" nick name at school no mystery there either:)

Jerry - well done for speaking up. :D Most don't.

Agreed - thanks for clearing this up.

If I might make a suggestion, it would be that you don't give people the impression that they can expect to recover tax and VAT for either PPL(H) or CPL(H) training / examinations. The circumstances in which that would be accepted by HMRC are i. for PPL(H) virtually non-existent; and ii for CPL(H) extraordinarily narrow and rare (perhaps you have a CPL and a fixed-wing business and want to expand into rotor-work - then you would have grounds to make a claim). I think that it would be better to assume that there would be no recovery of tax and then if that proved to be incorrect it would be 'good news' and not the other way around.

Please also see PM

senior aviation
 

But thats the point, we are saving students vat and income tax on there pplh/cplh/ir......... and all the rest,with our business model, I did it myself in 2003 the fact that we have put it together as a package, which makes it easier for our guy's to do, all of a sudden it changes things,I agree if you went to an account tomorrow and say I want to claim back vat and tax on my pplh and if you went to the vat office and said i want to do this, they would all say no every time agreed,and if they said yes we wouldn't have developed the package, it's the accounts that we work with that apply for the vat and get it because of the business model.

as you can see I've been a member of pprune since 2010 and only posted 5 times,but the comments above can be very "damaging" I think one guy said we had only put a phone number up there and an email address ha ha, I don't know how much more information you need to contact a company,and worse I think someone mentioned "fraud" which is amazing how you can come to that without speaking to someone or any grounds for this, but as a flight school and senior aviation in such a small industry everybody knows everyone, so to jeopardise both companies and our reputation for a couple of hundred pounds profit every few months, to help fellow pilots and students after I've spent tens of thousands of pounds on training "I don't think so"

I understand that there will be lots of people saying you can't do it, I've had people telling me this my whole life,and believe me its much more fun to go out and do it.

Guys I've already broke my record for replying to posts, take the course don't take the course, and the guys that say you can't will always be the one's saying you can't.

if you have a dream follow your heart,keep your head down,work hard,treat people how you would want to be treated and I'll see you smiling on the other side.

Oh almost forgot, I think one guy said that we would be taking money off people and running in these bad times, which did make me smile,wouldn't it be nice to get some of the money back from the government for all the tax we pay on food,fuel,council tax,income tax,vat,cars,bikes,flight traininggggggg, thousands and thousands.

I'm with you guy's we are trying to help,and the fact that we give a 100% money back guarantee if we can't save you money, I can't see what more you can offer :ugh:

wish all you guys the best and you know where we are if you need us.

do something different tomorrow.

Jason.

JerrySenior

On your main page there is an error,

"even if your in the middle of your PPL course or just starting your commercial we can save you money."

should read

"even if you are in the middle of your PPL course or just starting your commercial ?licence/course/qualification we can save you money."

If your website is aimed at non-aviation potential customers, referring to commercial without a specific reference may be confusing, commercial as in a TV ad?

Its only a little thing but typos on your main page stand out and detract from your message.

heads up
 

finally positive feed back thanks for that, english was never my thang ;)


many thanks.

Jason.

This Vat thing has been done by me, however the Vat man was dubious until I showed him the reason why I was wanting to claim back the vat on all training and such things, when I showed him the details and thus the reason he agreed, turned out he was ex Raf and also an Anorak who went to all the local airshows......I think that helped, but I didnt know that until after he made a noise like the man from "Del-Monte":D

Peter R-B
Lancashire

http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/515...k-website.html

The other thread is VERY interesting indeed. Moderators have moved my post from the other thread to this one, but I thought it was important to edit this post with a link back to the original thread I was posting against, so you know what prompted this...

I'm training for my PPL(H) now and upto 52 hours so far.

I looked into this last year when I started my training. I asked about the VAT thing (as 20% on top of £250 lesson is hard to swallow). So far, I have paid over £2600 of VAT on the lessons. Plus, there is VAT on the 52 landing fees I've had to pay, and VAT on the ground school courses I have taken and exams. I bet I am easily up to £3000 of VAT since starting this.

When I looked into this last year, the flying school said 'no' to me claiming the VAT back. I also checked with my accountant (who is senior partner of his firm and an ex-tax man) and he also said 'no'.

I have also 'moaned' about this to fellow student pilots and the qualified pilots at the airfield and they've all had to pay VAT, because their accountants and instructors have all said 'you can't claim back the VAT'.

I'd really like to know more about this.