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Aviation History
1996
1996 - 0650.PDF
GAMTA CONFERENCE Meeting the challenge The effects of the recession may be subsiding, but the general-aviation community continues to face some tough problems, as delegates attending the UK General Aviation Manufacturers and Traders Association (GAMTA) annual conference at the Forum Hotel in London on 7-8 March, heard. Andrew Doyle, David Learmount and Forbes Mutch report. UK CAA slammed over foreign training-schools policy D EAFENING UK INDUSTRY condem nation of a system which allows foreign flight-training schools to issue UK com mercial pilots licences looks as if it might be producing an effect at the UK Civil Aviation Authority. The conflict on this issue between GAMTA and the CAA was highlighted in an angry speech by GAMTA council member Peter Moxham. As marketing manager for the Oxford Air Training School, he criticised the CAAs chairman Sir Christopher Chataway for being "...so commer cially naive as to be beyond belief in his recent THE ISSUE OF UK PILOT training to approved UK commercial-pilots- licence standard abroad arises because flying-training overseas, particularly in the USA, is less expensive than in the UK. Direct costs can be about half of those in the UK, but the licence gained is a full UK one . UK flight-training schools have long maintained that the price differential arises not just from the southern USA's weather advantage, but because UK schools are burdened with taxes and regulations not faced by US schools. Consequently, GAMTA has been commissioned by the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to send a team to the USA to report on how the differences arise. The DTI justification, says GAMTA chief executive Graham Forbes, is that the team is studying a competing industry for "best practices". The GAMTA team, which has already left for the USA and hopes to report by the end of March, is meeting a recently stated CAA principle that all sections of the UK aviation industry should analyse and establish the criteria for "benchmark" quality in their operating methods. Q statements on the poli cy. Chataway was clearly taken aback by the strength of feeling dis played, and said that he would "look again" at the policy. The row was precipi tated when, on 14 July, 1995, California-based Everything Flyable be came the first foreign flight-training school to be CAA-approved to train and license UK pilots. The CAAs official policy is that it has no mandate to rule against such a training option for UK student pilots if the foreign school con cerned proves that it can train them to the UK syllabus and standards. Similarly, the CAA and the US Federal Aviation Administration award licences to foreign maintenance-organisations to carry out CAA- or FAA-approved airline maintenance. The FAA, however, says that US pilot licences may be issued only by US-based flying schools. The CAAs insistence in sticking to the letter of the law has made it "a laughing stock" in other countries which operate according to the intent, not the letter, of regulation, according to GAMTA chief executive Graham Forbes. Moxham's attitude was made clear in a rhetorical question about UK law which allows foreign training to be UK-tax-deductible for UK stu dents, while UK schools are required uniquely in the world to charge value-added tax to foreign students buying UK flying training. He says: "Can anyone see the Germans, Swiss, French or Americans behaving in such a manner?" European attitudes, as indicated by the draft European Joint Aviation Regulation on flight- crew licensing (JAR FCL), seem to be more in line with GAMTAs thinking than that of the CAA. Designated for adoption by the Joint UK flying schools are still winning foreign-airline sponsored trainees Aviation Authorities QAA) in June 1996 with implementation in June 1998, JAR FCL states that FCL training "...must be carried out by an organisation having its registered office and principal place of business in the state of the organisation which is issuing the licence". Because the UK CAA's normal policy is to adopt JARs as UK regulation "as soon as possi ble", theoretically its overseas flying training policy will be reversed in June or July this year. Moxham, however, is not convinced, warning: "My fear is that, when JAR FCL comes into place, the UK CAA will seek grandfather rights for the overseas schools which they have approved." The CAA agrees that Moxham's fears may not be groundless, because a policy document issued by the JAA FCL working party states that "...the position of existing training organisations must be taken into account", interpreting this to mean that the JAA has not finalised its policy. On this issue, the only crumb of hope which the CAA has thrown to UK flying-training schools, apart from Chataway's promise to "look again" at the policy, is the assurance that any for eign organisation applying for approved status to train UK pilots has, from the programme's beginning, been warned by the authority's head of FCL, Des Payton, that JARs might eventually rob them of their privilege. • 30 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 20 - 26 March 1996
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