Roger Wiltshire, general secretary, British Air Transport Association
In a recent ”On the Soapbox” Mike Collett, chairman of Air Atlantique, accused the UK airlines of neglecting General Aviation (GA), and wanting it to ”pay its way” in safety regulation charges, despite what was described as the airlines' high dependence on the GA community. Now that the CAA has announced proposals for revised charging schemes, ABTN”s September ”On the Soapbox” puts a different slant on costs.
”First, we are pleased to see a strong and growing GA sector in the UK and I am sure that those in the GA community appreciate the economic benefits, including many jobs, generated by the strong UK air transport sector. It is right that aviation in this country punches above its weight.
However, quite frankly in today”s world, expecting others to pay for you is not an option and the claims of almost umbilical dependency just do not reflect reality.
For decades the CAA charging schemes have clearly not reflected the actual costs of regulating the various sectors of the industry. The airlines” charging scheme (over 15-tonne operators), has been raising, each year, many millions of pounds more than the CAA resources used to regulate them. The scheme has been used to subsidise other schemes and in some cases has been paying for whole areas of cost totally unrelated to airline activities. One example is the General Aviation Policy unit at CAA whose entire annual cost of about ”1m is currently being paid for by the airlines” charging scheme.
The UK aviation industry pays for all the CAA safety regulation costs and a 6% rate of return to Government on top. This ”70m a year burden is far higher than the cost carried by aviation in other countries where governments recognise the social and economic benefits and make a contribution. However, until we can change it, we all have to live with the reality of UK government policy, despite the competitive disadvantages it brings.
UK airlines are operating in a highly competitive industry where all areas of cost are challenged. Gone are the days when they could afford to pay for others and still be financially viable.
And anyway, why should the air passenger subsidise the private operator? It is like asking the bus passenger to subsidise the private motorist and the taxi operator. That is a laughable proposition on the roads and it”s no more serious in the air.
So this large and long-running cross-subsidy has to be tackled and, following much hard work by the joint industry and CAA team, these proposals begin to tackle it. As well as the competitive distortions and the sheer unfairness there is another good reason why this issue should be resolved now. Following the introduction of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) there are major changes to the way we are regulated, either already in place or just around the corner. Instead of arguing about who (else), should pay for what, we should all be working together to ensure safety regulation is both effective and efficient.
The dependency argument often uses pilot recruitment as a central example. A strong industry and growing demand for air travel means a strong market for pilots in the UK. Many airlines recruit directly from the existing pool of pilots and others will also continue to work closely with the training schools. But any relationship is focussed on the delivery of good quality pilots and is not the result of some generic dependency between GA and the airlines. It is certainly not an argument for arbitrary cross-subsidy of the costs of safety regulation which is just one of the many costs faced by any aviation business.
For those attached to subsidy, the good news is that ”paying your way” will not happen overnight. After decades of significant cross-subsidy it now seems that the very generous transition arrangements proposed by CAA, will result in UK airlines continuing to contribute to the cost of regulating others for several more years to come.
We will, of course, support efforts by the GA community and others, to make the regulations and their implementation more efficient. When we are all paying for the regulator's activity we will all have an added incentive to find opportunities for improvement."
Roger Wiltshire
http://www.easa.eu.int
http://www.caa.co.uk
http://www.bata.uk.com
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