Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
#1613151
I never understood why in the UK on successful completion of a test a temporary licence cannot be issued by the examiner, valid for ex number of days while the CAA processed the license issue.

This would allow the applicant to exercise the privileges, put the emphasis on the school/examiner to ensure applications are correct at issue and reduce the burden on the CAA.

FAA system.
#1613165
Everyone should complain – vociferously. Service levels of the CAA will never really get better unless the whole community “beats them over the head” with complaints by informing them that they are not doing a good job.

I’ve never understood why they can’t issue a Temporary Airman Certificate like the FAA; then they could take their merry time and it would be less of a concern.

I’ve found having a separate stand-alone FAA Licence has been a great way to alleviate the stress of dealing with the CAA.
#1613186
RisePilot wrote:Everyone should complain – vociferously. Service levels of the CAA will never really get better unless the whole community “beats them over the head” with complaints by informing them that they are not doing a good job.


The CEO at M&S has a plan to cut costs by having clothing made in the far-east. That plan does not include listening to his customers complaints about the quality of his clothing. His profits have shrunk.

THE CEO at CAA has a plan to cut costs by employing fewer and cheaper staff and hiing up charges just like he did on the railways. That plan does not include listening to his customers complaints. The profits of everyone in aviation have shrunk.

Moral - If you want to be a CEO, work for a Government agency.
#1613201
RisePilot wrote:Everyone should complain – vociferously. Service levels of the CAA will never really get better unless the whole community “beats them over the head” with complaints by informing them that they are not doing a good job.


I think you’re under the misapprehension that they care about complaints. They have a special round filing cabinet, about knee high, in the corner of the office for them.

My license was issued during the debacle about 2 years ago.

I had rather a nice chat with a chap who was happy to not just be shouted at. He’d had a hard morning.

He was agency staff bought in that week, he said his job was to make soothing noises and give a timescale to anyone that phoned.

If you do phone, ask questions like, “which dept is it with”, “what’s been done to it”, “where does it go now”, “what’s the process it goes through?”

After a few of these without any answers, the chap admitted he had no idea about any of it, he was brand new, and he was just answering the phone and saying “another 4 weeks”, that was his job.

Was quite hilarious, he thought so too, and I became resigned to it.

He did say that it was ok for us GA pilots, think of the people not able to work, they were getting equally shafted. I think he was just relieved to have a rest for 10 minutes and not be shouted at.

Think I waited about 2 and a half months.

You think they care if anyone complains vociferously?
#1613218
You are correct; but it is at least a start. I always put things in writing to them and then follow-up using a forward of the same mail (and copying anyone else possible) to help highlight the problem. I've done this for 6 months plus over multiple mails till they finally attend to the item. Usually along the lines of "Per my mail in prior months …".

Services of restaurants/pubs/building/plumbing/etc has been much helped by foreign workers, however at the CAA we're stuck with our home-grown service style and systems.
#1613224
I too was caught up in the debacle two years back.

I can’t remember exactly how long it took, think around three months. But they eventually looked at my application and rejected it due to me sending the wrong course completion certificate with my online application (my school wasn’t aware that there were different ones for online / paper applications) - the ‘correct’ one was duly filled in, scanned and returned by email within about four hours.
Another week or so later they looked at my application and rejected it again as a number of hours I was claiming were from 2005. They said I needed to send my logbook, should have applied for an exemption and may need to retake my skills test. I had applied for an exemption before my test and they had granted it, but do you think the guy I spoke to on the phone understood any of that?

Anyway, I got fed up and wrote a long, polite letter to Andrew Haines asking him to look in to the situation. I had an apologetic email from him, a phone call from the Head of Licensing (who confirmed they’d ‘found’ my exemption), my licence about two days later and a full refund of the application fee.
They said they were putting process improvements in at the time...

I’m five hours off completing my IR(R), hoping to have it done by the end of June. Judging by current stories I’m now wondering if I’m going to beat the April 2019 deadline for initial issue... :lol:
#1613226
I'm in the process of applying for an additional rating which requires submission of all previous logbooks (despite the fact they have had them twice previously) . I hadn't used my preceding logbook since my house move and it was still packed away in a box somewhere. I idly googled the CAA lost logbook procedure while my wife looked for it (yes typical bloke I know :lol: ) and was shocked to note it now requires 2 separate, pre-booked £100 CAA interviews rather than the former sworn affadavit :scratch: .

How come we are trusted sufficiently to fill in and maintain our own logbooks but not trusted sufficiently to declare our hours if said logbook is mislaid or stolen?

Bonkers.
flybymike liked this
#1613254
The CAA must have managed a few restaurants I have been in, when the answer to why no-one has bothered to take an order, or have had to wait an un-acceptable amount of time to be served, is, " were very busy tonight" thats why our service is carp.

One gets the impression of the quote from the Bell Telephone Company in response to high charges and Carp service, was in the day, "We are the phone company" Pity there isn't an independant company that could take on the job and let the CAA do what it really only wants to do, and that is deal with airlines as mentioned before.
#1613258
FlarePath wrote:Maybe the highly paid upper echelons of the CAA could ask the heads of the passport office, & the DVLA, how they manage to process hundreds of thousands of forms/fees in far quicker times, but the CAA can't manage a few hundred? :evil:

Yes, well, on the subject of DVLA, remember why the driving licence now runs to age 70 when it used to need to be renewed every three years? - because it was computerised and the computer system couldn't cope with issuing a driving licence to everybody every three years, which the manual system had been perfectly capable of (I know, I worked in a driving licence office as a summer job as a schoolboy).