Median Average, not Mean Average, nor Mode Average. 
I’m a bit confused by this:
> Indignant that I was calling the UK, I demanded to speak in English (for which she obliged), and she kept asking “who maintains my aircraft” and to get them to call. At this point I was irritated, and finally encountered the CAMO bit, where they couldn’t understand why a pilot-owner would call for parts and not the CAMO
I have NEVER had a supplier ask about CAMOs or anything else, I fill out the web form and a couple of days later the parts arrive, and I’ve not told them what aircraft it’s for, they just ship the parts. I wonder who he was dealing with?
The other thing is these AOPA articles always have a bit of an agenda: “make sure you keep AOPA strong so these terrible things don’t happen here”, so often the articles deliberately make things sound much worse than they actually are. To be honest, having lived (and flown over 1000 hours in) the United States, and now owning an aircraft here, the biggest annoyance I find are the regulations put in place by airfields not the regulator, such as a silly amount of paperwork if you want to use many airfields outside of bankers hours (whereas in the US, no one cares if the FBO is open or not, if it’s closed you just land and use the self-serve pump).
In the UK, of the companies which can supply a form 1, most won’t deal with the public. Adams for example stopped years ago, requesting evidence of 2 or more planes in your company.
LAS do but they don’t do a form 1 or 8130, so euro reg owners can’t use them…… In theory 
They like to appear to be serving the homebuilt market.
The parts with a form 1 cost c. 30% more, which supports the installer trade discount system. LAS don’t do installer discounts…
US AOPA is in the business of promoting GA in the USA and trying to make it (more) attractive. In this context, many of their articles tend to play up how good it is in the USA vs how bad (or less good, take your pick) it is elsewhere. There was quite a blow-up last year between US AOPA and Canada COPA when AOPA sought out individual (only) negative views about NavCanada to support their arguments against the current US attempt to privatize ATC, without even having the good manners to ask COPA their opinion.
One thing that shows up from all the comments above is the lack of consolidated, validated data, and a very large body of anecdotal “data” which also often gets generalized. I know various groups, including AOPA Europe, have being pushing EASA on this as a necessary foundation for good legislation. The challenge is large if we want to define a “Europe” scope for comparison with the US. This is an area were US AOPA is very good at mining the available data to support action plans albeit with the huge advantage of one country / one administration. When looking at GA in each European country, it is clear that there is no single European market of population, culture, and regulation which would support a valid comparison one-on-one with the USA.
Peter wrote:
Adams for example stopped years ago, requesting evidence of 2 or more planes in your company.
Why are they turning down people’s money?
Presumably because maintenance companies moan to them like hell whenever
Admittedly this is a case of blatent profiteering because the maint company already got their trade discount and should not be marking it up even more (but most do)The scenario where one really wishes that any aircraft owner could buy parts direct is where a freelance engineer is being used. The freelancer is usually more than happy to get free issue parts because he doesn’t want to get pushed towards the mandatory VAT registration threshold (83k currently I think). But as I often say (and as some people – who presumably have a really great setup – often disagree with me ) there is very little freelance work done in Europe, on the certified scene, for various reasons….
AFAIK most UK owners who use freelancers (and most of them are N-reg owners) buy parts from LAS Aerospace, or Aircraft Spruce Germany (Sandelving) or even A/ Spruce USA. No 8130-3 but then you don’t need an 8130-3 anyway for an N-reg… that (and the Form 1) is yet another European money-making device.
It really depends on the parts. I’ve ordered quite a bit from Airpart Supply UK with no issues and good satisfaction. No questions asked about who I am or needing to order via a shop. All for an N-reg.
I have an FAA A&P who does all my work. He works for an EASA shop, and invoicing goes through them, but we deal directly with each other wrt stmt of work, decision-making per FAA regs, FAA paperwork, etc. Sometimes he has or can come up with a part locally/regionally at a reasonable price, usually something found during an AI. We have a future to-do list that I use to spread out costs over annuals, and many of those parts I order myself because I have all the time in the world before the next annual. He is fine with that.
Yes; Airpart sell direct. My A&P also has accounts with all these people anyway.
However, in the context of this thread, I think there is quite a bit of stuff that goes on in Europe which is restrictive – even if many people (undoubtedly well represented here on EuroGA) have found solutions and thus don’t find it a problem. I have found solutions but that doesn’t stop me writing about it, in the hope that somebody out there finds it useful
alioth wrote:
Why are they turning down people’s money?
They aren’t …. I just bought something from them today, and with good polite service
They pulled my account, with the reason I posted. I would not make it up
Maybe a new policy?
