EBAA Wants Common-Sense Rules
Mike Vines/Show News
EBACE/Geneva
EBAA Wants Common-Sense Rules
EBAA President and CEO Brian Humphries hasn't lost his enthusiasm for taking on Europe's aviation rulemakers, and says EBAA negotiators are trying to help implement common sense rules relevant to the majority of small European business aircraft operators. "The EU seems to make life as complicated as it can for people," said Humphries, "It could be called strangulation by regulation."
The three major factors affecting European business aviation at the moment are EU-ETS, security and the rewriting of EU-Ops, he explained.
On the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, Humphries says there is a very simple answer to the proposed scheme that would mean business aircraft operators not having to get involved in the expense of direct carbon trading. This is a Eurocontrol simplified carbon calculation model known as the Pagoda system.
"We've got great support from The Directorate-General For Energy and Transport (DG TREN) on business aircraft emissions trading, and it fully supports the EBAA's idea of being allowed to use the Pagoda system. The trouble is DG TREN is not running this proposed legislation. The DG Environment is," Humphries told Show News.
Under the Pagoda model, operators would pay a combined monthly bill that would include their Eurocontrol fees and carbon emissions.
"The challenge we've got at the moment is how accurate Pagoda would prove," said Humphries. "We're helping Eurocontrol to validate Pagoda by working with some operators and doing direct calculations and comparisons. If it's within 2% it should be possible to use the calculations to include operators with 500,000 tons of annual emissions. At the moment, for some reason best known to themselves, the DG Environment is saying this would only be suitable for operators producing up to 10,000 tons of emissions. The alternative for us is ridiculous, and would mean each flight department working out the specific gravity of fuel, the fuel temperature, calorific value, all this sort of stuff, and the cost to operators in extra personnel and or consultants fees could be ¬40,000 annually."
More worrying over-regulation, according to Humphries, is with the current EASA Ops rulemaking, "The industry isn't in any fit state to put a whole lot of effort into rewriting this while it's struggling for its very survival. It's not needed from a safety point of view, and is hugely confusing. Timescale implementation was supposed to be 2012, with all our consultation comments in by the end of May. This has been pushed back to the end of July, but we are asking if it can pushed back further to at least 2010."
On European security issues he says, "The Commission has excellent proposals appropriate for business aviation. We just hope the other EU States will support it. For once we would like to see European-wide regulation."
Tarmac photo credit from EBACE 2009, Geneva: Mike Vines
