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Is the G-reg finished?

I visited the biggest biz jet airfield in my area the other day.

I would say they are about 80 aircraft based there. 20 or so are operated by the flying schools and they are all on G reg. As for the rest king airs, PC12, Citations etc they are all N reg, M reg there are even more biz jets on the 2 reg than on the G reg.

I even spoke to the flying school owner and he said he would rather move all his maintance and pilot licencing into the N reg.

I hear stories that easyJet are moving all their aircraft off the G reg and all their pilots are moving to the Austrian licensing system as well.

I have to say this doesn’t surprise me as the standard of service at present CAA at particularly licensing is shocking.

I suppose my question is can the CAA remain in It’s current form with the obvious massive loss of income they must be experiening?

Also if the UK leaves EASA is their opportunity to improve our current regulations so the UK becomes a registration of choice. Rather than avoid?

You might be surprised to hear that several examiners and ATO managers on this side of the channel speak very highly of the efficiency of the of the UK CAA, especially when it comes to the revalidation of UK/EASA class and type ratings in France.

France

I work on biz jets. We have hardly aircraft on the G reg. Mostly they are registered on flags of convenience, tax havens. Tax havens are more important than maintenance and pilot licensing.

Near Luton

Bathman wrote:

I hear stories that easyJet are moving all their aircraft off the G reg and all their pilots are moving to the Austrian licensing system as well.

This is true but has nothing to do with the CAA. Easy and some other airlines are justifiably concerned about their ability to serve inter-European flights after Brexit. That is why they move away from G-Reg. Failing an air transport agreement at Brexit date, with G-Reg they might end up loosing all but the from-to UK routes if they remained in G-Reg. I guess other carriers who do have markets outside the from/to UK markets will or already have done the same.

Up to the Brexit vote and the apparent danger of an actual Brexit without agreement, the G-reg was seen by many as a sight better than certain others, lots of owners within EASA land kept their planes G-Reg rather than transferring to their own country. This also has changed as a consequence of Brexit.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Bathman wrote:

I suppose my question is can the CAA remain in It’s current form with the obvious massive loss of income they must be experiening? Also if the UK leaves EASA is their opportunity to improve our current regulations so the UK becomes a registration of choice. Rather than avoid?

Yes, I think one of the attractions of UK independence from EASA would be the pressure brought to bear to create a UK regulatory regime which is attractive when compared with EASA and equal when compared with FAA. Whether that pressure will result in leadership from within is another question. Time will tell. EASA would not be hard to beat and it does seem to me that pressure for UK CAA self preservation might produce results. Competition improves the breed.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Easy and some other airlines are justifiably concerned about their ability to serve inter-European flights after Brexit. That is why they move away from G-Reg. Failing an air transport agreement at Brexit date, with G-Reg they might end up loosing all but the from-to UK routes if they remained in G-Reg.

I would think that this is decided by where they have their AOC, not where their aircraft are registered. Of course if you have an EASA AOC it is likely simpler to have the aircraft registered in EASA-land than outside.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

The high-end scene in the UK has always been mostly non G-reg. Historically the much more available FAA IR was the main driver in light GA, say up to and including a TBM. I went N-reg after 3 years of G-reg (G-reg bought new).

Historically the UK CAA was also pretty efficient and full of smart people, including at the customer interface. This really has changed

The G-reg bizjets are usually AOC charter ops; it has been possible to get a UK AOC with say an N-reg but by the time you got the permission (G-reg AOC operators were entitled to object to the DfT if someone applied for this) complied with the same maintenance etc you may as well get a G-reg.

The airline moves were done to avoid creating a cabotage situation. In international aviation, for paying passengers, you can fly e.g. an X-reg within country X, from X to country Y, but you cannot do a flight which departs and lands wholly within country Y. It is very hard to get international agreements to enable cabotage, because every country has its domestic airlines and they raise hell if anyone applies for a permission. The EU legalised cabotage within the EU, so e.g. Easyjet could do a flight wholly within France. Once the UK leaves the EU, Easyjet etc could continue flying where one end of the flight was in the UK but that would have restricted their operations considerably. So they moved to an EU based AOC, which needs an EU based office, nominally, and following the Brussels “extreme hardball” threat to invalidate UK pilot licenses on 29th March 2019, they moved those, and then they had to re-register any G-regs in an EU country… They no doubt spent millions to cover their 6 o’clock, but their shareholders would have expected them to do nothing lesser.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

From here:
https://centreforaviation.com/analysis/reports/airline-ownership-and-control-rules-at-once-both-irrelevant-and-enduring-345816

“European Union limits non EU ownership of the airlines of its member states to 49%.” This might prove more difficult for easyjet/BA etc to do than just moving some licences.

I’m certain that easyJet Europe (the company with the Austrian AOC and OE-reg planes) will understand that and will have worked to ensure 51% EU ownership – otherwise they wouldn’t have bothered.

Andreas IOM

Indeed.

What is “ownership”? There is no way to control the geographical ownership of a listed company. The Sultan of Oman could probably buy 90% anytime and nobody could do anything about it. The UK Govt could block such in a “national security” scenario but that’s not EJ. So it must be more complex.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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