Costs | GAA

More than 6000 GA pilots get EU grants to upgrade their comms

January 29, 2019

Funding provided by the EU has helped more than 6000 GA pilots and private aircraft owners to change from their 25 kHz radios to 8.33 equivalents. This issue is essentially no different from New Zealand’s switch to ADS B transponders, because in both cases GA operators must incur costs for equipment in a change that profits commercial players in the aviation system, and provides …

Flight training and the pilot crisis: A litany of lost opportunities…

January 13, 2019

There is no evidence that any New Zealand government (including the current one) has ever had any interest in writing a strategy for our aviation industry, and a new report from Massey and NZ ALPA gives an indication of some of the consequences. They include: A lost opportunity for this country to capitalise on the training needs for an enormous international shortage of airline …

Cheaper ADS-B is already on the way – but somewhere else…

September 30, 2018

CASA in Australia has listened to its aviation community and will be developing rule changes aimed at making it cheaper and easier for Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) technology to be voluntarily fitted to visual flight rules aircraft. This action follows consultation which showed broad support for the voluntary adoption of ADS-B across general aviation. The consultation made it clear the installation of ADS-B in …

ADS-B: We know the science, but what’s the bottom line?

September 18, 2018

Anyone following the progress of ADS-B’s introduction to New Zealand will have noticed one Great Big Official Unknown: How it’s going to be paid for. We all know (and Officialdom has formally acknowledged) that the big financial winners from ADS-B in New Zealand will be Airways Corporation and the airlines. We also know that, for this country to fully enjoy all the safety benefits …

Changes: Why are we waiting? Because we’re at the bottom of the pile

July 28, 2018

The GAA has had a meeting in Wellington with CAA Board Chairman Nigel Gould and Director Graeme Harris. One of the topics was the length of time it takes to achieve a rule change. On his whiteboard, the Director drew a triangle which had the airline sector at the top, commercial GA in the middle and recreational GA at the base. He explained that …

Fuel Excise Duty refunds: Time to plan a different route?

Dealing with Ministry of Transport officials is incredibly frustrating. For years, the GAA has been trying to get the ministry to seriously look at the unfairness of pilots paying fuel excise duty on Mogas – a tax that goes towards building roads their aircraft will, hopefully, never need to use. After a long period with no communications from the person tasked within the MoT …

It’s official: The CAA has a virtual licence to extract unlimited money

A group of operators has failed in a complaint to the Regulations Review Committee about the Civil Aviation (Safety) levies Amendment Order 2017 and the Civil Aviation Charges Regulations (No2) 1991 Amendment Regulations 2017. The committee considered the written and oral evidence and the responses of the Ministry of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority. It has made an interim decision not to draw …

The global pilot crisis. At last, people are waking up

July 16, 2018

Boeing, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers, estimates an additional 640,000 pilots will be needed worldwide over the next 20 years, 40 per cent of them in the Asia Pacific region. Air New Zealand has announced that it’s working on the issue behind the scenes with the Airline Pilots Association, and there is agreement that trainee pilots need better support and more funding. …

No apologies for acting in the public interest, says the CAA

April 5, 2018

The CAA has now had the opportunity to consider the material presented by the Des Lines and Brian Mackie including their “Overview” document and the results of their “Client Satisfaction” survey. The CAA welcomes feedback on its performance. As a responsible state sector entity, the CAA must – and does – operate in an environment of accountability to the public, whose interests it ultimately …

Shocking, insane and incompetent: Customers condemn the ‘toxic’ CAA

The full results of the GAA’s independent survey of CAA client satisfaction have been published. The report reveals significant disapproval and disquiet. On virtually all questions seeking a rating of 0 (no satisfaction) to 10 (very high), the Authority scored below 5 and in some cases, such as cost control, less than 2. The CAA is described by some GA customers as “shocking”, “insane”, …

Category: Costs