UK CAA proposes 26% hike to ATC charges
UK air traffic control charges are set to rise to £2.08 per passenger, an average increase of about 43p or 26%. The UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has outlined its proposed new price controls for NATS (En-Route) plc (NERL), a subsidiary of NATS Holdings. NERL is the provider of most air traffic control services in the UK and the CAA regulates the prices it can charge airlines for the services it provides in UK airspace. The...
Coventry Airport at risk as Council boosts gigafactory investment
Apparently determined to turn Coventry Airport into a car battery gigafactory, despite having received no interest to date from the automotive industry, Coventry City Council has announced that it is spending an additional £500,000 on promoting the site. According to a report by the BBC, the public money would be spent on work to attract an investor for the site. The authority has already spent £1.75m on the project and plans to use...
ACS acquires former Tayside sim
Perth Airport based pilot academy ACS Flight Training has agreed a deal to purchase the ALSIM ALX flight simulator formerly owned by Tayside Aviation. This comes after administrators have revealed that they are investigating financial moves made by the school’s owner in the run-up to its collapse. Having failed to achieve a sale of the school as a going concern, the administrators of recently closed flying school have been selling...
Bought ‘sight unseen’: cheap KitFox gets inspected!
At FTN Towers we are quickly falling for the ‘will it start’ and ‘I bought the cheapest…’ craze of YouTube videos. What is more exciting is that a number of popular influencers are now moving away from aging ‘barn find supercars’ and ‘rusty old Cadillac’s’, and into light planes. In this video Rebuild Rescues inspects a early 1980’s KitFox series one, that it purchased...
UK Government to extend transponder discount scheme a third time
A Department for Transport (DfT) rebate scheme designed to encourage adoption of Electronic Conspicuity (EC) see and avoid. devices, such as automatic dependant surveillance broadcast (ADSB-out), within general aviation (GA) and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) communities, has been extended for a third time. The joint venture between the CAA and DfT was first launched in October 2020 with the intention of increasing the number of...
Wingly at risk due to new flight-sharing proposals
Flight-sharing platform Wingly is under threat of closure in the UK following the announcement of new proposed regulation on cost-sharing flights. Wingly connects pilots with people who are willing to share flight operating costs, and in many cases increasing access to private aviation. The proposed amendment would restrict pilots to only flying when they were already scheduled to fly, meaning it will become illegal for private...
