Aviation charges cause concern

Press, 13 December 1989, Page 9

Aviation charges cause concern

Christchurch aviation engineers and pilots have asked for time to study the impact on the industry of proposed licence fee increases, and to recommend acceptable alternatives to the Minister of Civil Aviation, Mr Jeffries.

A meeting of about 350 engineers, pilots and operators called to hear an explanation of new licence fees last evening decided to send ' a deputation to the Minister.

The meeting had to be moved to a hangar after the Canterbury Aero Club became too crowded.

Officials from the Air Transport Division of the Ministry of Transport explained new licence fee charges, which in some cases' represent increases of several hundred per cent. The charges, due to take effect from April, include a jump from $337 to $l6BB for an airline transport pilot’s flight test. Renewal of a pilot’s licence will rise ffrom $7B to $169, while an

engineer’s licence renewal will increase from $7B to $484.

The controller of aircraft maintenance licensing at the Air Transport Division, Mr Murray Smith, said the division had to recover $10.7 million from the aviation industry to cover its costs.

He said the charges were by no means set in concrete,, and called on those attending the meeting to send submissions to the division outlining how their part of the industry would be affected. A spokesman from a Christchurch group set up to oppose the new fees, Mr Chris Bell, said imposing the user-pays principal through licensing was nonsense and grossly unfair. Another speaker said pilots and engineers did their job for the safety of the general public. They were not the users of the system but the enforcers, and should not be charged for doing their job.