Anyhow. Deciding on a Saturday morning that it’s now all good to fly, go to the airfield, pull out the plane and just go flying is totally invaluable. This is not about the costs. I wouldn’t do the flying I’m doing without owning
Ownership is priceless indeed.
but it’s the most simple barriers that are the problem
I think this came up before and it is a big problem, but for some reason many did not agree. I think a lot of people don’t want to admit that their country has the same ground politics as every other…
hazek wrote:
So disgusting makes me want to quit after just 3 years.
No idea how feasible that is in ELLX, but have you considered finding a decent flying club or two? I don’t own an airplane, but have access to two fleets (actually three, if I count the two Barons I fly for a private owner, but which I can fly if they’re available) and can go flying pretty much whenever I like. There are some restrictions on longer trips, but they are not overly onerous and can usually be dealt with easily.
I am already a member of our club of course. I just today flew the 172SP for an hour. It’s useless.
Planes are used a lot by a lot of people so all of them have something wrong with them. The nicer planes are always booked far in advance so unless I do the same I’m left with the trainers. Doing so costs 30€ each time regardless if I cancel due to weather. Not to mention I need to pay a min 2h per day when I book for 4h or more. And not to mention the price is terrible. The 172SP is 254/h wet at ELLX prices for example, and ELLX has some of the cheapest AVGAS.
Renting is for Sunday flying, to trot around on a local XC perhaps to visit one of the nearby fields and their restaurants. What I want to do is fly somewhere, stay as long as I want and fly where I want when I want when there’s weather. For that renting is just horrible. Really truly abysmal.
And the worst part is I can totally afford to own and own something nice and relatively new. But I won’t be hangaring it where I live or anywhere close by anytime soon, that’s for sure. Ridiculous.
So yeah..
hazek wrote:
Doing so costs 30€ each time regardless if I cancel due to weather. Not to mention I need to pay a min 2h per day when I book for 4h or more. And not to mention the price is terrible. The 172SP is 254/h wet at ELLX prices for example, and ELLX has some of the cheapest AVGAS.
OK, I get it. At these prices it’s ridiculous.
Almost no sizeable European city has a GA airport near it.
That is the price of living in an area of high land values. People live in these places for reasons of their choosing (e.g. jobs paying 2x as much) but then amenities are expensive. I live/work 50 miles from central London and anybody working here would double their money by working in London. The catch? 7k/year spent on commuting. It gets slightly amusing when I interview someone who has moved down here and they expect the same money down here while saving the 7k and having a vastly better quality of life.
Also a lot of people in GA have huge amounts of money, despite owning relative wreckage. So some hangar which is big enough for say 10 planes and could thus command about 50k/year in rental income (of which 50% will be lost in business rates) gets sold for several million! There is often somebody willing to pay heavily for security of tenure. If you are lucky you might get a place in such a hangar, but the owner is likely to be picky because GA is full of whingers 
What are you talking about. I tried anything that’s within 1h of driving distance, 4 smaller fields – NOTHING AVAILABLE! They didn’t even respond to my inquiry. The only people who could get spots are people who know the current tenants, the old geezers, who hang around the same airport bar at 8 o’clock every evening drinking beer, that will let their friend stay and cohabitate in a larger hangar, and even that unofficially at a gentleman’s agreement. To get something in your name from the airports around here is impossible. So where am I suppose to move then?
This! This is the true barrier in GA in Europe.
A lot of owners here would surely say they had to wait in a long queue for a while before getting a hangar space. My previous aircraft was based 15 min away from home and now I am more than an hour away. Every suitable airfield closer than that didn’t bother to even respond when I inquired about the possibilities.
If I hadn’t gotten any hangar space, I would have gone for an Europa XS. @europaxs would tell you how his Europa lives with him at home :)
For occasional flying with the family, I would have rented from a club nearby.
Having your plane an hour or more away from home does put a major damper on ownership. Yes, ownership means greater availability, but after a while one looks for excuses not to go to the airfield.
One of the great things about ownership is being able to go for a quick sunset flight after work. But if you have to travel an hour to get to it, pull it out of the hangar, pre flight, flight, post flight, return aircraft to the hangar and then drive home for another hour it all starts to pall after the initial enthusiasm of a new toy wanes.
I found it hard enough, especially in winter when my hangar was 45minutes away on an airfield with lights and no closing time.
Most would say 1hr is too long to be workable long-term. I am not sure I know of any exception.
Peter wrote:
Most would say 1hr is too long to be workable long-term
Really! I had assumed that many would be traveling at least 30-45 minutes to get to their plane.
It would be interesting to know from the owners at EuroGA how much time do they need to get to their aircraft and how does it affect the kind of flying they do.
