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Nav Canada Question

Weasel

Well Known Member
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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I'm sure we'll figure out a way to make it more complex and more expensive ...
 
Great thread! Can someone from the UK and Germany explain the heavy side of the scale of we privatize ATC in the USA?
 
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.
 
The good and the bad of Nav Canada

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.
 
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.
 
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.

That excise tax is a bargain. $0.10/L in Canada, which works out to about 28 US cents per gallon. And that's just the federal excise tax. The provinces add their own excise taxes ranging from $0.062/L to $0.33/L. On top of that add federal sales tax of 5% or harmonized sales tax in some provinces of 14-15%. All in, taxes run between C$0.64/gal and C$1.83/gal. I don't think much of that revenue makes its way back into aviation.

It doesn't matter much to me while I'm building and renting, and $70/yr will hardly register as an expense once I am flying. Not looking forward to buying AVGAS though, local price is about US$4.66/gal which is not that bad I guess.
 
FEES?

I may be off base here, but many of the airports' ramp or landing fees may not be 'NavCan', but the local airport authority, funding runway paving .....or a new parkade!:rolleyes:
 
I may be off base here, but many of the airports' ramp or landing fees may not be 'NavCan', but the local airport authority, funding runway paving .....or a new parkade!:rolleyes:

Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that they were necessarily Nav Canada fees. Sorry. I was trying to show that other fees had started to appear as well. I know that while Toronto Billy Bishop, Hamilton, etc have landing fees, Halifax International does not because there are no other GA airports nearby.
 
I'd still like to hear from someone in Europe about their experiences.

It's my understanding that there are considerably more fees (landing fees, parking fees, handling fees, fees for each approach, etc.) in effect, but that's just what I read.

It'd be good to hear from someone who actually *knows* what the deal is there...
 
I'd still like to hear from someone in Europe about their experiences.

It's my understanding that there are considerably more fees (landing fees, parking fees, handling fees, fees for each approach, etc.) in effect, but that's just what I read.

It'd be good to hear from someone who actually *knows* what the deal is there...

ATC in Europe is self financing, but the good news is that VFR and IFR (below 2T MTOW) is free for en-route. VFR advisory services vary a lot from country to country and you'll likely change squawk with every frequency change.
There are exceptions such as Galway charges for a VFR zone transit - I hope no one ever gets their call sign confused!!!

Approach fees are usually charged by airports for IFR arrivals, and all arrivals pay landing fees depending on the size, facilities and greed of the operator as there is little public funding of airports.

In general, you can avoid most fees by flying VFR or IFR in Class G airspace and avoiding larger airports.

Smaller airports still have to pay their way, which means paying about ?5-10 per landing at typical small VFR only airfields.
 
Hearing GA experiences from Europe may be slow in coming. While on a five week self guided tour of seven countries several years ago, we observed one general aircraft touring the beaches at Normandy.

A friend in Germany with a legal career and above average pay, finds the costs even in a club airplane to be excessive. He has in the past few years substituted sailing for flying.

Cheers, Hans
 
Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that they were necessarily Nav Canada fees. Sorry. I was trying to show that other fees had started to appear as well. I know that while Toronto Billy Bishop, Hamilton, etc have landing fees, Halifax International does not because there are no other GA airports nearby.

Yes I agree, however on my last xcountry to the east coast was going to land YHZ because of no landing fees however found that the FBO's charged a fee to park on there ramps........and they literally own all the ramp space where a GA aircraft could park
 
Yes I agree, however on my last xcountry to the east coast was going to land YHZ because of no landing fees however found that the FBO's charged a fee to park on there ramps........and they literally own all the ramp space where a GA aircraft could park

Yep, I discovered that a few years ago. Innovation Aviation (I think that is where I parked) gave me a night free when I bought fuel from them, but I had to pay for the other nights.
 
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