Indeed, hangar rent is usually what pays for the aerodrome, as well as subsidising the rental aircraft fleet.
NB: it can be organised well enough without requiring lots of personnel, IMO
Good evening all,
I’d like to chime in to the general appraisal for this fantastic flying weekend at a fantastic destination. It was good meeting you all and spending a couple of pricey meals together.
Thanks a lot to jwoolard for taking me up in his TB10 in the morning – the day couldn’t have started any better. I spent the afternoon strolling through town. On my flight from Lausanne to Bern-Belp, I decided to route through the Valais again for the love of it. This time, I took another pass, cutting the flight a bit shorter and making it different from the route in the morning:
The pass was flown at 11.000 ft with only the slightest turbulence. There were several IFR departures out of Sion, so Sion Tower asked to fly the valley as far south as possible.
I found the approach to runway 14 in Bern-Belp surprisingly challenging (I had anticipated something lighter after the steep runway at Lausanne-La Blecherette). The airfield itself is in a basin that’s considerably lower than most part of the left-hand circuit for 14 – which makes you constantly worry about your altitude because you’re flying quite low above the built-up areas. The first time I came in much too high due to that and decided to go around and do it properly the second time.
I have a lot of video footage of the various flights and I’ll see if I edit that into a short video covering this – brilliant – weekend within the next few days.
Looks like you all had a wonderful weekend :)
More photos, from the return flight…
Jwoolard’s TB10
A lot of haze north of the big mountains
There is a big “hill” to climb over on the way back up north
Surprising how much snow there was on level ground, with relatively little on the mountains
That lake looks well frozen
The last view of the Alps
Some lake in France, after which it gets pretty boring…
Troyes
This is what most of N France looks like from the air
This is the sharp edge of the front working its way across the southern UK
Approaching the IAF for EGKA RNAV 20
Established on the final approach track
You can just make out the runway here, with a slight offset (one gets a slight overshoot intercepting the FAT at ~120kt)
Yes the airport is great with fantastic infrastructure. Don’t know how they funded it. Hangars are close to 500chf / month for ‘normal’ GA airplane sizes but parkimg on the tarmac is 300-350/ month if I recall correctly… Yep, pricey! During summer months the apron gets completely full during day time. They’re building new hangars north of apron but it’s only to accomodate planes in old hangars behind and below the others as they will be torn down. The airport is struggling like all with noise complaints from neighbours and prescribed flight paths needs to be adhered to.
As you noted on price levels in CH, they are high. Everything is expensive so the avg labour cost is high and hence all services which include labour are expensive, eg restaurants. And I won’t tell you what a painter, carpenter, mechanic, electrician charges an hour… You’d be falling off the chair. On top of it, the Swiss often does things at best quality / goldplated. Nothing wrong with it, but things tends to be expensive overall…
There is some great hardware in the hangars: tbm, pc12, king airs and I’ve even seen a Cessna Mustang landing on the field. Quite impressive sight when he slammed it down on the numbers (not much room for errors such as long landing in that plane/runway combination)!
There seemed to be several PC12s either based or regularly visiting. That ought to translate to nice landing fees.
FWIW, here in the southern UK, GBP 500/month is what many pay for what one might call good quality hangarage (e.g. birds not actually crapping all over your plane). I nearly bought a hangar, 10 years ago (didn’t get it, due to a crooked estate agent) and that would have been out for 500/m for a 10m wingspan plane (TB20, PA28, etc) and that would have only just covered the 23k/year rates and ground rent. Still, I am sure even then it would have filled up fast, with SR22s and similar types.
There is a lot of hangarage at LSGL, which may be what makes it add up.
Nice pics! That ‘hill’ is called Jura… 
I see you got a shot of Mont Blanc – nice.
Yes, we’ve had fairly recent snow (10 days ago) but last week has been warm so snow has melted off the trees in daytime under a pounding March sun. Nights still fairly cold at altitude so snow on ground at mid altitude and higher is still remaining. Also evidenced by the frozen lakes you crossed in Jura… The coming week is forecasted to be clear blue sky and warm, so a similar flight to today’s will guaranteed have the ground look different in a week’s time, especially at low/mid altitude levels such as over Jura.
Need more photoshopping and/or a longer lens :smile!
You’re right, they have a lot of hangarage and the hangars are FULL.
The pc12s you saw are very likely to have been from Jetfly (typically golden paint scheme) who operates there a lot. But there a few other pc12s based there as well.
Look like a great event. I have always been a bit concerned about the runway length and the slope for a PA46 on departure if you don’t have a headwind downhill. How was the approach for those unfamiliar?
