After decades of simming but no IRL pilot experience I’m amazed this question never occurred to me before. Considering the people and their training, the hardware and software to run everything etc., I’m guessing every pilot has to pay for their ATC? Is it charged per flight plan / distance and if so how much? How much does a standard flight following request cost?!

 

Having flown in the US and U.K. I can confidently say that ATC services are free. I presume that they are payed by taxation.

Regards.

No, they are not free for sure.

In Canada, NAV Canada is the sole private company that is responsible for the country's air navigation services.

Every airline tickets sold, customers has to pay numerous fees besides airport taxes and sales taxes.  And so does the airlines as well, each and every flight it costs money.

And yes, tax payers money will also be subsides the ATC services

However, any private flying, we do not get charge for the flight planning services offered.

2 hours ago, avistudent said:

However, any private flying, we do not get charge for the flight planning services offered.

That really surprises me. I would imagine the people and infrastructure costs for ATC are pretty big.

The infrastructure is basically there for expediency of commercial aviation, but private pilots in most countries benefit from this by (technically at least) not being charged anything for it, but of course in reality we do all tend to pay for such services through the cost of airline tickets, parking fees at airports and such.

In spite of this, there are several varied business models for ATC around the world. In the past, almost all countries had their ATC be part of a Government agency, funded from the nation's budget, and this is still the case for many countries, notably the United States, but the problem with this is that funding can be a bit nebulous sometimes because of various incumbent administrations sticking their oar in and affecting budgets, frequently delaying their approval, which can lead to cash shortages and related issues. Because of this potential for unstable funding, lots of nations have moved their ATC services to privatised operations, but this too can cause problems, notably in the UK where a few years ago its for-profit corporation put in place some cost-cutting measures which, combined with a delay in the switch to some more modern systems infrastructure being put in place, caused very large scale delays and flight cancellations occurring. This is when a Government's civil aviation organisation has to start stepping in, and it is why most countries are loathe to let ATC go completely private and for profit. Because of this, some countries have preferred to use a not-for-profit private organisation, which is for example, what Canada does. Canada's business model for this is much-admired by other nations and there is a good chance many other nations will follow it either sooner or later, in particular, the US is currently looking at emulating it.

As you probably know, estimates for the damage the Covid pandemic caused in aviation projected that it would be 2024 before most countries would recover from its effects. Since funding for ATC comes from route fees and government tax revenue, this has meant there is a cash-flow problem with it. As a result of this, and the fact that many people left aviation in the pandemic, but have not returned to the industry, this is a big problem. Last week at EGCC Manchester for example, the CAA had representatives out on the ramp asking ramp staff what they thought was the problem, and predictably, they got the same answer from everyone - the wages are too low to attract people who were furloughed or made redundant in the pandemic, back to aviation. This might mean they will step in and recommend some legislative changes where wages are concerned, but nobody is holding their breath waiting for that to happen. So in the meantime, we are suffering delays and heavy workloads owing to staffing problems, and indeed funding problems. For example, last night we had an Icelandair 757 all loaded up and ready to push, but had to wait ages down on the ramp to push the thing, for just six passengers, whose bags were on the aeroplane, but who could not get through to board the thing because of shortages in security staff. This was something which was occurring all over the airport; I went from that flight to a Sun Express 737 and that too had to wait ages to push out because it was waiting for a slot owing to this being a similar story all over Europe at other airports, with many aeroplanes off-schedule, meanwhile all the other aeroplanes I was supposed to be working on which had landed and been on stand for as long time, had to wait for me to get to them, and so the domino effect of that makes things even worse. I ended up getting home at almost 1 am, and it's like that all the time, which is why nobody wants to do the job for the money you (don't) get. If it wasn't for the fact that some people like aeroplanes and want to work on them, there'd probably be nobody working on the ramp at all!

Having said that, some nations which have government-owned ATC corporations which charge fees for their operation, do actually bid on providing ATC services for other nations too, one example being Deutsche Flugsicherung (DFS), which is a German government owned organisation operating under the same laws as pertain to private companies in Germany (and most of the European Union too of course). As such, DFS provides ATC services at London Gatwick in the UK. DFS is funded via the collection of route fees which are levied by Eurocontrol (which covers 37 European nations), but since DFS is run as a not-for-profit organisation, any surplus money it gets is repaid back to those 37 nations (this basically means the airlines are paying for the ATC infrastructure, which means essentially, passengers on airliners pay for it as part of their ticket cost, with some funding coming from the nation's budget too). In the case of a UK airport's ATC being run by a German organisation, this is possible because, whilst ATC in the UK is for the most part run by National Air Traffic Services (NATS), NATS itself is a public/private partnership with the UK Government having a 49 percent share in it. So whilst the UK has now left the European Union, in reality its long involvement in the EU and its dealings with Eurocontrol mean it still has a bunch of similar rules to Germany, which make such an arrangement easy to manage.

What this means in the UK for example, is that whilst you can fly about in your Cessna and receive ATC services completely for free all over the UK, you do get charged landing fees at nearly every airport and you also get charged for parking your aeroplane there and using things such as ground power etc.

Edited July 4, 20223 yr by Chock

The fees are called Route Charges, at least in Europe - there's an example calculation (shown below) given by the route charging office in a document they produce - it's for a flight from LEBL (Barcelona) to EKCH (Copenhagen),

for a 77 ton aircraft (say A320 size). The fees are paid to each of the FIR's (flight regions) the aircraft flies through, with the mileage for each FIR determining  how much that country gets.

Annex A. EUROCONTROL route charge calculation example
Flight connection: LEBL (Barcelona BCN) EKCH (Copenhagen CPH)
Aircraft MTOW: 77.0 metric tonnes
Flight Date: 06 January 2021
Route as described in field 15 of the ICAO Flight Plan:

LEBL SIDOKABI UN861 FISTO UY156 ADABI UN858 VANAD UN874 VEKIN UN873 ADUTO/N0450F350 UN873
HELEN/N0448F360 UN873 SPY/N0448F350 UN873 GRONY/N0445F370 UN873 JUIST UP729 BATOB/N0439F390
UP729 DOSUR P729 TUDLO STAR EKCH

Point profile (NAV Aids, Waypoints) established with the route in Field 15 of the ICAO FPL:
OKABI TOU FISTO PERIG FOUCO ADABI BOKNO DEVRO VANAD VADOM BAMES KOPOR MTD NURMO PERON CMB
VEKIN ADUTO FERDI HELEN TOLEN STD EKROS SPY BETUS ANDIK KEKIX GRONY BEDUM LABIL JUIST DHE BATOB
DOSUR TALSA TUDLO
All points from the point profile can be loaded into the RSO Distance Tool but the points close to either
side of the State borders are sufficient to establish a correct route charge calculation (see Annex C).
Based upon this routing, the following distances are established in the charge areas concerned:
Spain (LE): 115 km Distance factor 1.15
France (LF): 905 km Distance factor 9.05
Belgium (EB): 87 km Distance factor 0.87
Netherlands (EH): 322 km Distance factor 3.22
Germany (ED) 219 km Distance factor 2.19
Denmark (EK) 214 km Distance factor 2.14
Taking the highest certificated MTOW of the aircraft concerned, 77.0 metric tonnes), the weight factor
of 1.24 is calculated (see section A.1.2.2).
The Unit Rates used in this example were those valid for October 2019.
Calculation:

https://imgur.com/a/UP2IUxf

The final total bill was €1438/£1240/$1500 divided between the states transited, so not cheap, and these are 2019 prices. 

Eugene

On 7/4/2022 at 2:55 AM, scotchegg said:

After decades of simming but no IRL pilot experience I’m amazed this question never occurred to me before. Considering the people and their training, the hardware and software to run everything etc., I’m guessing every pilot has to pay for their ATC? Is it charged per flight plan / distance and if so how much? How much does a standard flight following request cost?!

 

Us Private flyers leech of the commercial/military infrastructure.

Even private Air nav service providers staffing aerodromes are free, just make sure you don't land (or in some cases uses the service during school flights) 😉

"Tower, cancelling landing intentions I'm requesting a low approach", that transmission will sometimes save you 30EUR.