ENAC now includes the SEFA organisation, very big in airline pilot training. They have a fleet of 130+ aircraft which includes a large number of TB20s.
A fascinating document – thank you for posting it.
the comparatively large number of IFR/FP flights for the TB20 is due to the training fleet operated by ENAC at St Yan and Montpellier.
Interesting. I have been to St Yan a few times and saw a few TB20s parked out there, but never more.
As a wild guess of private instrument rated owner TB20/21 European IFR activity I would have expected maybe 1k-2k flights, so the other 10k must be training activity. That is still a helluva lot. It is about 30 IFR flights per day! You would need a fleet of 15-30 planes to be doing that, including student debriefing etc.
But SR22s manage a similar number to the TB2x, yet AFAIK almost none are operated by schools. So where does this come from? If we assume 300 based in Europe, and one IFR trip per week on average, that more or less adds up to the right number. But of the UK ones I know about, they fly very few IFR flights.
This might mean the IR community in Europe is a lot bigger (a lot more active – can’t tell which) than most would think. It also means most of it is N-reg, because some data on the JAA IR holders has come out and it was awfully thin. Germany has a lot more “compliance” (% of JAA IRs) but it still comes to a lot of flights.
I’d guess the comparatively large number of IFR/FP flights for the TB20 is due to the training fleet operated by ENAC at St Yan and Montpellier. My category HR10 was only 19, so that was probably me.
should be proud that Eurocontrol consider your Meridian to be an airplane worth collecting from
I would happily do without the pride and be with the money they charge me.
I think the poor slowtation creates more bottlenecks as it cruises over 100 knots slower to CAT at CAT Flight Levels.
An interesting document revealing bellweather types like the Super King Air still going strong.
You should be proud that Eurocontrol consider your Meridian to be an airplane worth collecting from.
PS: Never mention to Eurocontrol that they get the route charges from you. They will instantly protest saying that they just collect them on behalf of the member states and get nothing from it, their budget is fixed and independent from route charges. I made that mistake once 
By the way. Where did the 2t crossover point come from? Just as little point collecting from me or TBMs.
The other side of the low numbers is that it shows that collecting sub-2000kg route charges would be a waste of their time – and apparently they have concluded this on each occasion on which the subject had been revisited.
The last time was some 3 years ago, following which some senior UK NATS employees posted, anonymously (though everybody knew who they worked for) on a UK forum, how unhappy they and their employer was about it, in the present-day UK climate of “screw everybody who uses any service whatsoever”. Fortunately more sensible minds prevailed…
Also on a positive note, the people inside the system must be aware that there is no possibility of piston GA “cluttering up the airways” which has been another sentiment often heard in UK ATC presentations. This may resurface once they learn about the CBM IR but the data is there to show it won’t happen. The “thousands of VLJs” doing the same has probably died by now too
Yes and those are the stats whenever you go to Eurocontrol and tell them “I need this, it is very important for GA, you have to do it..”: “You mean very important in that it affects 0.14% of the flights?”. They are still rather nice to us GA folks, like not charging route fees for <2t but we’re quite irrelevant, when they hear “GA” or “small aircraft” they have a Gulfstream in mind.
That must be mostly the FTO flights.
If training flights dominate the statistics so heavily, I guess it’s an indication of the (very) low volume of private GA in Europe on IFR flight plans…(compared to the US where I believe almost 50% of the PPLs has an IR)
