DanBaier
Well Known Member
Seattle Avionics gave a great webinar yesterday - I'm not quite sure how I got the email invitation, but it was definitely worth attending. I think that within a day or so, they might put the recording on their website.
They made a couple of interesting points (I think I got most of these correct) -
- The FAA mandate relative to fees is much like the postal service - not intended to profit; rather to recover costs.
- Dramatic drop in paper subscriptions versus the corresponding increase in digital
- Current Jepp cost for paper version of 48 states is about $1250 (excludes sectionals) and the comparable cost for NACO would be about twice that.
- Current Jepp cost for digital version of 48 states is about $790 and NACO is $0.
- The source of all chart information is the FAA (even for the Jepps) - BUT, Jepp takes the data in raw format and does their own charting, so there might be some question of how much cost of charting associated with NACO would be passed on to the large commercial users who are using Jepps
- The paper cost is huge - not only the costs of printing and distribuiton, but also the cost associated with allowing small vendors credit for returns of unsold charts / volumes. That all is eliminated with digital when it's a download - even with DVD production, it's a large saving.
- References to the rollout of the changes - mishandled. They claim the FAA is, in fact, listening to the reactions.
- They believe that the ease of download of digital significantly promotes flight safety - I gather they intend to make this point in December.
- The FAA says (where I don't know) that after April 2012, no digital data will be available to vendors without an agreement (the premise being they have better track on distribution and insuring that people don't start using the "new" charts up to two weeks early).
In short, the appearance is that costs will go up, but that the FAA is aware of the objections that people are voicing and they're also sensitive to the safety issue. I'd really like to believe that's true.
Dan
They made a couple of interesting points (I think I got most of these correct) -
- The FAA mandate relative to fees is much like the postal service - not intended to profit; rather to recover costs.
- Dramatic drop in paper subscriptions versus the corresponding increase in digital
- Current Jepp cost for paper version of 48 states is about $1250 (excludes sectionals) and the comparable cost for NACO would be about twice that.
- Current Jepp cost for digital version of 48 states is about $790 and NACO is $0.
- The source of all chart information is the FAA (even for the Jepps) - BUT, Jepp takes the data in raw format and does their own charting, so there might be some question of how much cost of charting associated with NACO would be passed on to the large commercial users who are using Jepps
- The paper cost is huge - not only the costs of printing and distribuiton, but also the cost associated with allowing small vendors credit for returns of unsold charts / volumes. That all is eliminated with digital when it's a download - even with DVD production, it's a large saving.
- References to the rollout of the changes - mishandled. They claim the FAA is, in fact, listening to the reactions.
- They believe that the ease of download of digital significantly promotes flight safety - I gather they intend to make this point in December.
- The FAA says (where I don't know) that after April 2012, no digital data will be available to vendors without an agreement (the premise being they have better track on distribution and insuring that people don't start using the "new" charts up to two weeks early).
In short, the appearance is that costs will go up, but that the FAA is aware of the objections that people are voicing and they're also sensitive to the safety issue. I'd really like to believe that's true.
Dan
