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Air Navigation Services Terminal Charges in Germany

…yes, but that would mean trying to solve an actual problem.

I am getting the impression that is not the intention here. Soneone craving for openly voiced support and consolation, only
Know this from home.

And only one is jumping in…

Last Edited by ch.ess at 09 Sep 08:54
...
EDM_, Germany

C210_Flyer wrote:

Finally some who gets it. I thought I was the only one these guys were banging.

I think everyone gets it. We just don’t feel it’s worth quarreling over a single €4:20 item, considering the ripoffs which are common with airport charges.

Last Edited by Airborne_Again at 10 Sep 11:29
ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Ultranomad wrote:

I arrived under IFR and did an honest-to-goodness RNAV approach in IMC. About 6 hours later, I departed under straight VFR, on a V flight plan.

Well in that case there is no deviation from the normally accepted practices and therefore no complaints would be generated. But lets look into the future. Once its acceptable for them to charge you for your IFR flight plan enroute fee (Reason is they communicate with Euro Control) what is there to stop them from now charging you an approach fee in addition if you actually use the approach? So now you have two fees?

What is there to stop them from doubling the charges beyond 5Euros (incl VAT)? Is it what the market will bear? Its obvious from the comments here, that number is significantly higher than 5 Euros. Well if you have two fees it will be 10 Euros.

KHTO, LHTL

ch.ess wrote:

…yes, but that would mean trying to solve an actual problem.

I am getting the impression that is not the intention here. Soneone craving for openly voiced support and consolation, only
Know this from home.

I have already solved the problem and they are pissed about my workaround. That you can be sure of.

My only intention was to bring to everyones attention, that a whole new way of charging is being instituted right under you very noses. While all of you are fixated on the cost and how low (cheap) it is.

Next time a clown pines for how wonderful the US is regarding GA on this or any other forum, why dont all of you pounce on them to tell them if you dont like it here in Europe, then just move there? Because if you cant afford to fly then you should drive or fly a hang glider!
Have a wonderful time flying the Greek islands but make sure you bring your bankcard fully charged.

In the mean time I will continue to support an organization like AOPA (USA) which opposes user fees with donations* as well as letters to support their opposition to such fees no matter how small a value they promise ATC privatization will cost.

* My donations, since Ive been in Europe have exceeded at least by 20x what Ive paid to EDMS for their IFR (flight plan) enroute fee.

KHTO, LHTL

Regarding the starting topic of the thread: terminal charges in Germany.

There was a change on the 1st January 2010. The application of terminal charges became mandatory for all EASA member states. This was a piece of legislation that was first started in 1981. As you would expect, there was some concern amongst the pilot community and I wrote a report in Jan 2010 for PPL/IR Europe. It’s on their website.

The main concern was that this was insidious and was just going to get worse and worse. At the time of the report, I said that this was not the case, and I’ve not looked at it since, but suspect it’s still the case.

The main point for most private pilots is that each member state has the freedom to make exemptions. As with all of this stuff the legislation is labyrinthine, but in practice it comes down to:

Most member states chose to exempt <2t flights from terminal charges. Germany chose to levy them at 16 airports, and do so as a fixed fee rather than using the weight based formula. I should say that Germany chose to carry on charging them, as they were already doing so before 2010. These are the biggest 16 airports, so not Straubing, for the avoidance of doubt. The UK chose to exempt <2t flights for terminal charges, except where they were not allowed by law. See what I mean by labyrinthine? Those airports are Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, and Manchester, for those interested.

Regarding Straubing. The evidence is clear: landing/handling/terminal fees are the worst way imaginable to extract money from pilots. My favourite anecdote is from a fellow pilot at my home base. He said he’d never fly again to Shoreham when they made handling mandatory for aircraft over a certain weight. (1.9t??). All fair enough, but he did own a TBM850 outright, personally.

There is a huge amount of research around the psychology of pricing. I suspect that the overlap between experts in this field and those setting prices at airports is small and unlikely to change, and we all probably just need to get over it.

Alan thank you for highlighting the Terminal charges agreement of 2010, again.

It seems a lot of people have a difficult time understanding, or perhaps its me, that a filed IFR plan automatically causes a fee to be tacked onto your flight upon landing even if the IFR flight plan was only open for 1 min and then continued VFR for the next several hours. So I called it an IFR Flight plan (enroute) fee because nothing but a VFR flight was conducted in the country of the destination airport. Right now this fee amount is the same as that charged if an IFR Approach was performed. But it is not an approach fee since there was no IFR Approach made.

So technically the airport can conceivably decide to charge 2 fees one an IFR flight plan (enroute) fee and the other when you actually make the approach. That is the slippery slope that everyone should be concerned about. Its setting a precedent for this type of fee structure.

From my dealings with the airport its all a matter of what the customer will accept. One of the reasons they gave for this IFR flight plan fee was that “they had to communicate with ATC for the benefit of the IFR flight”. “Fair enough” I said "but dont you also have to communicate with ATC when it comes to VFR flights and flight plans? “Well yes,” they said, “but there would be too much protest.” “Ok I see, so you charge what you think you can get away with.”

They bought a computer program that lists IFR flight plans to their airport and so that they know whom to charge. Now the reason for this, and I got it from numerous sources, is because people would cancel IFR before entering the approach in order to avoid the approach fee. Well if its VFR why not? And if its IFR then its illegal to cancel and dangerous. So this is there solution to get money for the airport. Personally I would prefer they just double the approach fee and charge when someone actually makes the approach and if they are so hard up, also charge for “practice approaches”.

Ok to recap we now have two funding schemes 1 IFR flight plan fee 2 IFR Approach Fee Currently, you are only charged one fee which is an IFR flight plan fee but at any time they can decide to charge for both. The reason being it is already set up as a 2 tier charging system. Technically, the last time I looked at the AIP, there was no mention of an IFR Flight plan (enroute) fee, just a fee for an IFR Approach so they shouldnt be charging that fee if you arrive on a VFR flight plan after cancelling the IFR flight plan two countries prior.

As someone on this thread mentioned earlier, its the deceptive way they go about charging at that airport that is a concern. As I had mentioned I was charged for 6 months before I caught on. When asked, “oh its our new computer system that we have.”

Germans are supposed to follow the rules not break them.

KHTO, LHTL

Alan_South wrote:

All fair enough, but he did own a TBM850 outright, personally.

Is it fair enough?

I think if it was, you wouldnt have thrown out that, he is wealthy enough to afford his “own” TBM 850 airplane. A plane most us could only dream of owning.

I think there should be more research into the Psychology of envy.

KHTO, LHTL

You have a hard time accepting those five Euros, right?

Let me tell you that there are many taxes and fees in the USA we obedient Germans have never heard of (property tax comes to mind) – and many freedoms America has not heard of.

One day you will have to accept that Gernany and the USA are different countries.

Well alexis at least I got you to accept that its not 4.30Euros but 5Euros so that is a good beginning.

You guys here will never get anywhere regarding utility of an airplane as long as you wear the badge; look at me I can afford an airplane. It is when enough people have pilot licenses and its cheap enough for the average white collar person to be able to afford to fly for utility of purpose, then aviation will become a viable transportation tool in Europe.

Right now I agree with you its a rich persons toy. Kinda like what cars were before Henry Ford came on the scene.

KHTO, LHTL
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