Here in the UK we have had some recent high-profile general media stories about huge international organisations avoiding tax. Household names including Amazon, Google and Starbucks were splashed across the headlines – each of them using various legal tactics to minimise their UK tax payment. While these activities may be ethically dubious, they are all perfectly within the law as it is written.  Tactics like paying a “licence fee” to another group company, which happens to reside in a lower-taxed country, which all but wipes out any profits made in the UK.

And so we come to helicopters.

In the UK, aircraft type certification is under the remit of EASA, and it is widely known that the Robinson R66 does not yet have their approval and sales across Europe are stagnated.  That said, there are in fact examples of the R66 operating commercially in the UK, fully within the regulations as they stand.

We noted recently that Heliair were operating an R66 on a pipeline contract (including the actual aircraft featured in the photos here), which comes within the definition of the “Aerial Work” and not the “Passenger Transport” flavour of commercial flying.

The CAA’s Richard Taylor confirmed to HeliHub.com that “providing it has a current Certificate of Airworthiness, an aircraft on the US register can indeed undertake aerial work in the UK, but not public transport flights. The operator of the aircraft needs to apply to the Department of Transport [DfT] for a permit. The DfT would usually need to see the CoA and Certificate of Registration as well as the log book. Depending on the type of aerial work undertaken, exemptions might also be needed from the CAA, such as a low flying exemption for pipeline recognisance [sic] etc.”

Mr Taylor also confirmed “An aircraft with a Standard Certificate of Airworthiness under ICAO provisions, such as the R66, may indeed be permitted to do aerial work in the UK even though it has not yet been type certified by EASA.” and that “The DfT have indeed issued some aerial work permits for N-reg R66s”

So, Heliair are completely inside the rules and regulations from the UK point of view, and have complied with the Department for Transport permit requirements. Like the tax story above, the ethics of what they are doing is dubious, but they _ARE_ inside the law as the CAA explained to us.  Is the law a sham?

Just last week, the longer-established UK distributor Sloane Helicopters issued the following press release – Sloane Helicopters encouraged with R66 development although it is obviously still focusing on the EASA certification issue.

HeliHub.com went to some lengths to elicit a statement on the situation from Heliair, but they have not responded to us.

BHA Chief Executive Peter Norton, whose organisation represents British helicopter operators, gave the following response to HeliHub.com “I have no issue with the granting of an Aerial Work permission to operators who wish to use an N registered aircraft from within their own fleet subject to the agreement of the DfT and compliance with UK regulations.  In the case of the R66, useful operational experience with the type will support future UK sales once the aircraft has been certificated by EASA.”  Interesting!  Perhaps we have unearthed a sales opportunity that has been previously overlooked?

Jeremy Parkin – HeliHub.com

Photo (c) Copyright 2013 Graeme Lovell and reproduced here with his permission.  See his Flickr Photostream