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MT

I don't often get the chance to write 'hypothecation' but are you saying all costs come from user fees? I thought the CAA Scheme of charges couldn't show that and the NATS Price Control periods sought to address that?

CloudHound wrote:Can't find the link right now, but the story was that the Howards that run their former ancestral home as a 'venue' took to identifying light a/c flying overhead the estate, looking the reg up on G-INFO and then writing a letter claiming rights to the air above them.

I had one of Howard's letters.
It had two impacts on me:
1) I keep it in mind whenever I'm working on local tourism promotion, and accidentally forget to include a venue.
2) I developed a new 'short sightseeing flight' route.

Mike Tango wrote:

GrahamB wrote:We already pay for it through the duty levied on Avgas, unlike the zero duty paid on Jet A1.

Not towards any air traffic service you don’t, bar possibly any part of it that comes out of the defence budget.

You miss my point @Mike Tango. We are already paying a charge which CAT users don’t pay, it’s just not being used to fund the ATS we deserve, and which other civilised western nations seem to manage to provide.

CloudHound wrote:MT

I don't often get the chance to write 'hypothecation' but are you saying all costs come from user fees? I thought the CAA Scheme of charges couldn't show that and the NATS Price Control periods sought to address that?

I’m not clever enough to understand the in depth financial shenanigans of running the business.

NATS seeks out other income streams and business areas in order to bolster the business, which will contribute towards the bottom line of the business.

There’s issues with NERL and NSL finances being kept separated as one is regulated and the other isn’t.

But, in terms of this thread, I just wanted to put to bed the suggestion that the company gets money from the tax pot towards providing its air traffic control services. It doesn’t.

My IFR touring aeroplane has an MTOW of 998kg.

A 737-800 has an MTOW of 79,016kg.

I'm not sure what the 737's airspace charges are, but if I wanted to fly airways (I can't as an IR(R) holder, but let's assume), and would be charged 1/79th of what he is, for the same route - it's hard to argue against it, save that presently we don't have that burden. BUT, I would demand the same access he gets if I am proportionately paying the same.

AIUI he doesn't have to pay for class D access, so nor should I.


Ultimately nobody should have access if it completely mucks up the flow of traffic for everybody else.

G

I think a fair system in the UK would pay pilots for their inconvenience when forced to allow their flight to be controlled. Obviously privately operated light aircraft benefit very little from UK airspace being controlled - very few of those aircraft are operating IFR and in the UK even IFR doesn’t always require ATC. Those who benefit from ATC control and separation within controlled airspace are those who want it and require it by company policy, motivated by the profit of providing CAT in a predictable environment. Everybody else gets little or nothing, except inconvenience. Therefore I think it would be reasonable for some of those airline company profits to be distributed to those they inconvenience in their pursuit of money.

The fly in the ointment with that plan is that UK ATC is itself trying to harvest cash from the airlines - to compensate them greatly for the inconvenience of coming to work... Naturally they don’t want to share either resource, either airspace or the siphoned money that airspace control brings them via the airlines.

Genghis the Engineer wrote:
AIUI he doesn't have to pay for class D access, so nor should I.

Ultimately nobody should have access if it completely mucks up the flow of traffic for everybody else.

G

Arguably anyone who lands at an airport in Class D does pay for the access in a roundabout way, given that landing/nav fees are ultimately collected by the airport authority (even if you pay the flying club).

Surely this is about transitting - not landing at an airfield.

But I totally agree, nobody should have access if it messes up the flow for others.

Oh - and the light aircraft paying considerably less for their airways charges (ie Birmingham to Jersey at FL100) is probably 79 times harder for the ATCOs Low and slow transits block levels and take forever!

(Not suggesting they shouldn’t be there but they are far trickier than a fast climbing 737-800 due to their performance)

So paying less for your airway access (number of seats/nm in the airspace and MTOW are in the formula I believe) does not reflect complexity.

Mike Tango wrote:

GrahamB wrote:We already pay for it through the duty levied on Avgas, unlike the zero duty paid on Jet A1.

Not towards any air traffic service you don’t, bar possibly any part of it that comes out of the defence budget.

The fact that the government chooses to screw around with the money that's paid is their own problem. We already pay through the nose to fly, far more so than in the US, all down to government fees, taxes and regulation that offer us zero in return.

If they want to remove all of that, then we could consider direct fees for air traffic services. Until then, they can jog on.

How much does it directly cost to have CAS and is it based on volume or a volume/usage calculation? Is it some form of lease?

Mike Tango wrote:The air traffic service is paid for by user fees, there’s nothing from taxation or such like.

Apart from the small detail that NATS is 49% owned by the UK government.

@Genghis and AlanM
The Eurocontrol airways calculation uses the nm track distance (FIR entry to exit) and the square root of the MTOM (seats don’t come into it) - so your Boeing would pay roughly nine times your one ton spamcan (if all weights paid Eurocontrol). I would say the spamcan is already paying a premium for buggeration value, wouldn’t you?
And don’t get me started on their billing procedures........anything less green and more obscure to the customer would be hard to imagine.

PaulB wrote:

Emphatically my answer to this is 'NO!'.

For all the reasons already mentioned in this thread, it can only make things worse and less safe.

I would however consider paying for a reduction in controlled airspace, or I would be accepting of a deal whereby having EC mandated allowed the reduction of controlled airspace to take place.

Thinking about this overnight, I opine that the key phrase is 'VFR'.

IFR traffic, of any size, uses much less airspace than VFR because it can be assumed to be able to stick to a height and track. Because VFR traffic must be able to stay clear of cloud, it cannot - hence "not above", "not below", "staying west of", etc.

Is that perhaps at the root of the question?

G

The air traffic service is paid for by user fees, there’s nothing from taxation or such like.

Apart from the small detail that NATS is 49% owned by the UK government.

How exactly are these two statements connected, unless there is some suggestion that NATS ATS gets financed by HMG in some way?

As Mike has said, it does not.

CloudHound wrote:Can't find the link right now, but the story was that the Howards that run their former ancestral home as a 'venue' took to identifying light a/c flying overhead the estate, looking the reg up on G-INFO and then writing a letter claiming rights to the air above them.

Cuius est solum eius est usque ad coelum et ad infernos