Nav Canada Question

[Weasel]

Ok so down here in the USA sounds like change may be on the way...

I spent a while reviewing the Nav Canada Fee documentation and to be honest I am a little confused.

Looks like base line for a light airplane you pay ~$68 a year currently. Does that cover everything? If a guy operated his light airplane (less than 3 metric tonnes) for 350+ hrs a year with say 40 instrument approaches and filed IFR 70 times that year and got flight following (whatever it is called up there) say 20 times. Would his cost still be $68?

Also did you get a reduction in fuel tax when the privatization took place?

Looks like I paid ~$880 or more last year in fuel tax of which I am not sure how much was supposed to be used for the ATC system.

[Tom Martin]

It is a once a year fee. We have been doing it for quite a few years now and it is just another one of those bills to pay. In terms of airplane dollars it hardly registers on the scale.

[F1R]

Yes, a flight school C-172 can fly 7 times a day with the students filing 7 fight plans and getting 7 Wx briefings and it costs the same as a farmer owned 172 on a grass strip that only makes 10 flights per year, that never even goes outside of 25 miles from home, never files a flight plan and never gets a wx briefing. It is simply $71.00 with GST per aircraft registration. Not exactly even or fair, but that is the system. Nav Canada was privatized several years ago. Now they run a large surplus bank account.

[tomkk]

I'm sure we'll figure out a way to make it more complex and more expensive ...

[moosepileit]

Great thread! Can someone from the UK and Germany explain the heavy side of the scale of we privatize ATC in the USA?

[rv8bldr]

One note here is that we do have landing fees at *some* airports. Mostly these are the larger ones serviced by airlines, but even then, the fees aren't all that large. The last time I landed at Toronto City Centre (or Billy Bishop) right by the CN tower I think the fee was something like $15. There aren't that many "fee" airports and in all the time Nav Canada has been in existence, I think I have only landed at two or three.

[Lycosaurus]

Nav Canada has worked out pretty good for us over the years, with a fixed fee of $70 odd dollars with tax for us small GA owners. I can fly VFR or IFR with that.

The downside recently has been that Nav Canada has now given airports the responsibility for getting the IFR approaches certified. This means the RNAV approach at my home airport has to be paid for my the hangar owners. Not everyone flies IFR and want to pay into a $15K to $30K (depending on type and number of approaches) re-qualification every 3 years (?). The major airline airports' ILS and RNAV approaches are still maintained and paid for by Nav Canada. So as you can see, fee and service downloading continues to occur as time goes by.

VOR routes have been disappearing quickly in the last few years, but that was a given with the obvious uptake of GNSS. I believe VOR route attrition has also hit the USA.

Other than the recent service downloading, I have been happy with the Nav Canada approach over the last 20 years.

[roadrunner20]

I wouldn't mind paying the annual user fee, if they do remove the .193/gl fuel excise tax.
But, gov rarely removes a tax once implemented, it will probably be an additional fee.
It sounds like it's working well with our Canadian RVers.

[tomkk]

Originally Posted by roadrunner20

... if they do remove the .193/gl fuel excise tax.

[Snowflake]

Originally Posted by Weasel

Would his cost still be $68?

Yes.

Also did you get a reduction in fuel tax when the privatization took place?

No. We were supposed to, but nobody thought to fight for it right then, and now the tax goes to general (government) revenue, not to NavCan.