Its often the case in the US that people have a hangar and house near their work, and another house and much bigger multiplane hangar within an hour by air. A friend who flies for a major airfreight company does that and has a beautiful polished C195 for weekend fun and an easy to fly C172 for the commute. He keeps one or more cars in each hangar, and also motorhome in the big hangar. His weekend life at the airport house revolves around aircraft, flying and friends with the same interests. People drop by in their planes and sometimes stay for lunch or overnight. The occasional long flight in the C195 might start with a short C172 flight the day before, an overnight stay, then launch early the next morning. Same routine for motorhome trips, I assume. Retired neighbors are there full time and watch the place.
My comments weren’t addressed to Spain specifically. If somewhere else is better then you’d want live on an airport somewhere else instead (if one were available).
Here it is on Google maps: Alhama de Murcia
Right next to the motorway for those who really love the sound of engines.
172driver wrote:
Btw, there’s another unused airport right next to it, can’t recall the name,
That’s this masterpiece of an airport here (I know, I should just shut up as we can’t do it any better here in Germany, just look at the Berlin Schönefeld national disaster…):
Aeropuerto internacional de Murcia
Finished since 2008 but still waiting for it’s inauguration. When they have sold all the plots of the “Alhama” airpark they can convert this one into an airpark as well. At least, it has a decently sized runway and CAT1 landing aids 
Honestly, this effort should be applauded. Frankly, $150K for a piece of land you can build a house on, isn’t all that bad compared to many other places. Let’s say you spend another $200K on the house and all of a sudden you have a house with a hangar for $350K. Where else could you have that for the same cost in Europe? You could probably commute daily to London in your TBM for less money than having a terraced house in Kensington or Chelsea and hangaring your TBM at Biggin Hill…
Couple of years ago I looked at a property in the high desert here between San Diego and Los Angeles. It was an old Spanish adobe house with it’s own 1900ft dirt rwy. Woman wanted $500K for it. Rwy was a bit too short for my plane at time and wife certainly didn’t enjoy the idea of being in the middle of nowhere, so we never pursued it. But just recently I came across this ranch property with it’s own rwy, and the urges came back to me. Rwy about the same length (but that’s not a problem for the Commander), double the money, little closers to the city. But then again, right next to it in the same town is the municipal paved rwy, so in many ways doesn’t make any sense….
@AdamFrisch, Pauma Valley Country Club & Airport is actually a pretty nice place… unlike New Cuyama! I’m just sayin’ Actors John Wayne and Bill Murray own or owned houses there. The only issue is that you can’t hangar your plane at your house, but they have a nice paved airport assuming 2700 ft (825 m) length is enough.
I know, there are plenty of these airpark places, some even closer, but then you’re looking at HOA fee’s etc and homes you can’t really rebuild or make your own. Something nice about having your own ranch and your own airstrip. Besides, golfing does nothing for me, so don’t want to pay the premium for belonging to a golf club. But I hear you about Cuyama, not the most exciting place…
AdamFrisch wrote:
But I hear you about Cuyama, not the most exciting place…
Hey, it’s next to a condor sanctuary, you could breed some really big birds or do birdstrike avoidance training! What’s not to like ?
I’ve found another way to live with my plane 
For Switzerland, apart from the fact that a new airport is almost impossible to realize (with the notable exception of Bressaucourt), the only way something like this might work is to attach it to an existing aerodrome, preferrably one which has also got customs clearance. An airfield without that is quite useless in a country where you are never further than 20 flight minutes from a border.
I do recall vaguely that there were some “projects” (in other world some folk got together over a few too many beers and started dreaming) using former military bases for this kind of purpose. Some of those bases have now been converted to airfields indeed, such as Mollis, Ambri, Reichenbach and some more, but none of the projects ever got off the ground. Primary reason for that would be the planning permission which would need massive bureaucratic work. All the land in Switzerland has been assigned specific use, industrial, military, residential, e.t.c. In recent years, residential areas around airports have been often threatened with building bans to avoid future protests. All this does not help if you want to convince a community to convert the runway they want really gone for decades into something permanent (all communities which have this kind of real estate dream of the pots of millions coming from redevelopment and sale of the said property, even if they don’t even own it…) and would in some cases even be claimed illegal if the noise footprint any airfield has to provide would tangent the community. It does not matter that people actually WANT to live like this, it is simply beyond the bureaucratic imagination of the powers that are.
There appear to be quite a few such villages which exist and work fine in France, not only Vendee. Not all of them are known or even have an internet presence. There are more projects, but I suppose they might just stay that, including one at Nimes Garons, where the idea appears to be to connect the village to Garons airport. At least, in France there seems to be a fighting chance to organize something like that.
In Germany, well, as I said, there would be plenty of disused airfields out of the cold war. Many of those are either used as “million graves” where lots of EU or other tax money went into civilizing those airports and hope for Ryan Air or others to use it, others were converted into solar parks and yet others completely disappeared. I would have thought that particularly military fields with their dispersal areas would be perfect for this kind of thing, everyone could get a piece of land next to one of the platforms and just build the house there and voila. As often the dispersals are on one side of the runway and the main tarmac on the other, this might even work for mixed use, communal airfield on one side, airpark on the other. But again, in Germany there is LOTS of opposition to this kind of thing.
Where I have been daydreaming about something like that would be Bulgaria, where there are dozens of abandoned agricultural airfields, quite a few with concrete runways and also some disused military ones. Even land prices would be interesting there. BG has had quite a development in new airfields, there are a good dozen of them which have sprung up in recent years and GA has developed from practically zero to a quite active one. There were plans for this in Primorsko, to increase runway lenght and offer plots for sale around it, but they came to nothing, equally at Balchik and some others. At least, most of these airfields are quite active these days even without the airpark.
The place I saw in Naples is called Wingsouth Airpark. At the time, there were 3 houses for sale with hangars e.t.c. between 300 and 400k USD. It is private, that is only owners can use the airpark’s runway which is concrete and lighted too, I guess also visitors to owners may get a permit, otherwise it is a closed gated community.
In most cases the partner of the aircraft owner, understandeably, does not see the benefits of living on an airpark I suppose. Certainly not if the home would be fitted with a pool like this
aart wrote:
In most cases the partner of the aircraft owner, understandeably, does not see the benefits of living on an airpark I suppose.
Which is fair enough I think. Just imagine for a moment that you are forced to live one hundred miles away from civilisation in a place populated by nerdy people who share the one interest of your partner you care the least about. Hell on earth come true
