COPA Reform

[Shiny Side Up]

5. Small airport closures. COPA worked diligently and sucessfully to fight to keep Banff and Jasper open. They supported financially the successful fight to keep Delta Heritage Airpark open as well. They need to keep it up. It would be great if they could do something to create a national airport plan, with TC's buy-in and active support. But I fear that ship may have already sailed.

This is the number one thing that would get me to be interested in COPA. As of yet, I don't feel that they have warranted my dollar since I see very little action here, besides the Banff and Jasper work. There are lots of airports under fire in this country and there is a lot of silence from COPA on the matter. One of the biggest things that put me off of them as an organization is when I've found COPA members working against the GA larger interest in this regard. When you see a COPA flight petition to have an airport closed, something is wrong.

One of the things that I really like that AOPA does, is report on who in the government is in favour of aviation and who's against it. So members can effect change directly in the voting process. There is nothing of this sort of information out there in Canada, a who's who of their political stance for or against aviation.

[AirFrame]

Fuel Tax: Not going to happen, focus on where you have a chance of achieving something! Details: Nothing in law requires said fuel tax to be spent on anything in particular. There are other fuels taxed in a similar fashion, and it would be "unfair" to NOT tax aviation fuel, but tax all the others. Even when it is said that fuel taxes are spent on infrastructure, it's mostly some and mirrors.

I know this is likely a dead issue. It doesn't change the fact that a tax was added to pay for air navigation services, and not removed when the air navigation services were privatized and the private company started charging us directly. Double taxation!

Digital charts: Too much liability issues if you don't control the "end point", won't happen. Your ink jet runs out of cyan, your chart ends up missing some important feature, someone dies, somehow it's NavCan's fault (don't roll your eyes, you just know someone would try and sue). Sad state of liability related issues indeed, but it's the reality.

And yet, FltPlan Go now offers free Canadian charts and CFS to anyone with an iOS or Android device. Nobody wants to print their own charts, they want digital charts they can view on a screen. Anyone cheap enough to download a PDF chart and try to print part of it to navigate by probably doesnt' care if they miss that they're flying over someone's fur farm by accident.

[kamikaze]

Like I said, when you control the app, you control the end point, and you can control accuracy regarding the data display.

You specifically said NOT like Foreflight. FltPlan Go is more like Foreflight than not ... it's a service with an app, and the publishers control the product end-to-end.

Giving people PDFs, that's a whole other ball game, and a much riskier one from their perspective.

Both Foreflight and FltPlan got liability insurance in order to publish the Canadian products ... a requirement from NavCan last I heard ...

I agree that I would sure like to see the digital products showing up in more and more places, which seems to slowly be happening. But hoping for US-style publishing won't work, since here those are products of a private company, and not a government with open data policies. And heck even back when nav charts were done by NRCan for TC, there were no digital products for sale (even though they existed internally).

Compare NavCan to Jeppesen in terms of chart publishing, not the FAA, for something that's more apples-to-apples.

[fleet16b]

IMHO: COPA needs a complete change
of management. Every single officer needs
to go.

Then, COPA needs to make it clear to it's
membership WHAT it's going to do, and
HOW it's going to do it, with complete
transparency and accountability to it's
members, including opening it's books
to show it's members how it spends their
money. Regular external audits are essential.

I am a member of AOPA, and their effectiveness
at lobbying on behalf of GA is jaw-dropping.

+1

[jeta1]

.

[AirFrame]

Like I said, when you control the app, you control the end point, and you can control accuracy regarding the data display.

If it ever came up in a courtroom, Foreflight and FltPlan Go would both say "but we're just displaying NavCanada's maps as-is" and then prove it by showing them. I find it hard to believe either of them would carry sole liability if somehow it came to that.

You specifically said NOT like Foreflight. FltPlan Go is more like Foreflight than not ... it's a service with an app, and the publishers control the product end-to-end.

I was referring to any app that forces ongoing click charges to keep using it, vs. the one-time-fee I can pay for a paper map, and then use it as long as I want to. Foreflight forces you to buy *all* of the Canadian charts at once, not just the ones you need. And I believe they lock you out of them when your subscription expires, too... You can't keep using the Foreflight program after your subscription ends, even with expired charts.

Giving people PDFs, that's a whole other ball game, and a much riskier one from their perspective.

It's only risky to their business model, and even that risk is much lower than they probably realize.

back when nav charts were done by NRCan for TC, there were no digital products for sale (even though they existed internally).

To be fair, very few people could have used the digital data back then anyway.

[2R]

Preston manning would never agree to the merger . Although he might take the job that pays more than the Prime Minister of Canada gets paid, just so he could donate the money to one of the charities he supports

[xchox]

I don't know how your going to solve COPA's problems... But I want a COPA that actually does something...

Like preventing CYXD or CYKZ from shutting down.
Preventing companies from kicking out flight schools and private aircraft owners from Monopolized airports.
Helping fight the cost of General Aviation.

etc etc etc

[New_PIC]

I don't know how your going to solve COPA's problems... But I want a COPA that actually does something...

Like preventing CYXD or CYKZ from shutting down.
Preventing companies from kicking out flight schools and private aircraft owners from Monopolized airports.
Helping fight the cost of General Aviation.

etc etc etc

I would really like to support something like that too ... but there's that thing about ends not justifying means.

[kamikaze]

Speaking of COPA lobbying, or lack thereof, and the comparison to AOPA ...

One thing I'm starting to notice is also that AOPA usually doesn't fight alone ... there's other similarly minded organisation that cooperate with them when appropriate, like NBAA or GAMA or others I'm not thinking of right now.

I don't know whether those organisations have Canadian interests, or whether we have Canadian equivalents that would like to play ball, but that would certainly help in important ways I would think. Manufacturer's associations, business associations, other types of pilot associations, etc.

If manufacturers and pilots and COPA and, and ,and ALL present a united fron against closing airport X, well, that might help get better results ...

[AirFrame]

Kevin Psutka has posted a comment on the proceedings at the AGM:

http://copanational.org/vocal_minority.cfm

The silent majority will always appear to be greatly over-represented when vocal minority votes are stolen.

[kamikaze]

If you think that dealing with your unhappy membership is a distraction and waste of time, well that tells you everything you need to know about their attitudes, and none of it is good.