- We provide various services to the aviation industry, including:
- licences
- medicals
- aircraft registration
- operating certificates.
Under the Commonwealth Performance Framework (required by the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013), we need to recover our costs for providing these services.
To do this, we use the Australian Government Cost Recovery Guidelines Resource Management Guide No 304, July 2014.
The Civil Aviation Act 1988 and Civil Aviation (Fees) Regulations 1995 also allow us to recover the costs of our services.
When and how we charge fees
We have more than 260 regulatory service fees, including for:
- licences and ratings
- exams
- medicals
- aircraft registration
- permits and exemptions
- operator certificates.
We have 2 types of charges:
- Fixed fee: the fee is on your application form.
- Hourly rate charge: when we receive your application, we send you an estimate of what the service costs.
For services with an hourly rate charge, we charge:
- from the time we open your application
- for all meetings other than the first meeting
- for any time we spend asking questions and requesting documents.
You need to pay the fixed fee or estimate and send us any required documents before we can review your application.
A cost estimate is valid for 30 days. If you don’t pay the estimate in this time, we may close the job and return your application to you.
If you pay the estimate after 30 days, we make sure it’s still valid.
If the final charge is more than the estimate, we will send you a revised estimate before the service is completed. The revised estimate must be paid before we can send you the final document.
You can’t exercise the capability until you receive the document.
Withdrawn or refused applications
We charge for all relevant time we spend processing and considering your application, even if we decide to refuse it.
If you withdraw your application after we start work, we:
- charge you for the time spent processing and considering your application
- charge you for any work completed
- refund you the balance.
Hourly rate charges
Our hourly rate depends on how complex a service is and what experience it needs:
- $190 – services that only a senior officer or an officer with specific experience or qualification can provide (for safety)
- $160 – all other technical services
- $100 or $130 – services that are mostly administrative or need few technical skills (see 4(2)(b) of Civil Aviation (Fees) Regulations 1995 for details).
The hourly rate includes any administration time.
Travel charges
Domestic travel
We don’t recover costs for domestic travel, including airfares and accommodation costs.
However, we do charge for time spent on domestic travel at the relevant hourly rate. This includes time spent on flights or driving.
To avoid disadvantaging clients in regions without CASA staff, we only charge travel time from the nearest CASA office or regional office.
International travel
We do recover costs for all international travel.
This includes costs for:
- visas
- flights/car hire
- accommodation
- travel time
- travel services provided.
Levy refund
Registration is mandatory. In exceptional circumstances, you may be eligible to apply for a refund of the remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) registration levy.
Exceptional circumstances may include:
- registered charities
- a public interest event
- duplicate registrations, resulting in double payments
- bank or transaction error
- test flights conducted for the purpose of repair or maintenance
- administrative error or advice from CASA.
All refunds are calculated monthly. Full or partial refunds will be calculated from the month of application. Registered charities, public interest events and test flights will be eligible for a full refund.
You must:
- have evidence of your claim for exceptional circumstances
- provide evidence of your registration levy payment
- complete Request to refund commercial RPA registration levy
- submit your completed form and evidence according to the instructions provided on the form.
Cost Recovery Implementation Statement
Under the Australian Government Charging Framework and Australian Cost Recovery Guidelines, CASA are required to prepare and publish a Cost Recovery Implementation Statement (CRIS).
4 May 2023