Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
How much do you have in a private pension?
Who knows? That’s also in funds and increases as time goes by, unless you are unlucky.
what_next wrote:
. Airports are not essential infrastructure here apart from those few which serve mostly long-distance connections.
It’s funny to see such comments from pilots who depend on this infrastructure…
what_next wrote:
It is quicker to travel by train from Zürich (downtown) to Stuttgart (downtown), yet there are several airline connections per day. Why should the tax paying public subsidise such nonsense? And that is only one example of many.
Ok, so do you want the state to order it’s citizens how to travel? It worked in the Soviet Block of old, sort of. And I don’t think you are actually quicker by train at all. Not even within Switzerland, let alone between large cities. e.g. to travel from where I live to Frankfurt takes 5 hours by car, last time I did it some 7 by train and about 2 hours by my airplane (ZRH-Egelsbach and then the train to the center). I’ve listed many such examples in the past, yet people keep claiming that the train is faster?
what_next wrote:
At my homebase, as Achim already wrote above, all GA traffic from flying school to Boeing buiseness Jet is handled through them. Did it make GA operations cheaper? On the contrary….
Well, that is not equivalent to what is done in the US then, is it. Primary difference, in the US you CAN use an FBO but you don’t have to in most places. Most FBO’s waive charges if you buy fuel. They have all sorts of services you CAN use but are not obliged to. If a monopolist handler is allowed to fleece the customers as he wishes, that is not in the interest of the airport who will loose customers that way. So they should learn how, not how not to. The problem with the handling organisations in Europe is that in many places their use is compulsory. Take that away and the handlers will come down in prices. Add value to it and people will actually use them rather than fight to avoid them.
achimha wrote:
Convenient GA access to e.g. New York City isn’t cheap either.
Depends. There is a huge number of airports around NY and while I hear some are quite expensive there is a choice for others who are not. I’d have to look them up, but a few years back I flew with a friend to an airfield 1 train hour away from Penn Street Station and it had no landing fee if you took fuel and no other charges as well but a lovely FBO who drove us to the train station and back for free (the attendant got a tip of course). On Long Island there is another one which is used quite a lot, Farmingdale I believe, which is also about 1 hr train from the center. In the US, that is not a lot.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
There is a huge number of airports around NY and while I hear some are quite expensive there is a choice for others who are not.
My favorite urban US airport to make this point is Hawthorne, KHHR, pictured below… Its sits between LAX and central Los Angeles, the route to downtown being the road shown in the photo, with Hawthorne closer than LAX.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Ok, so do you want the state to order it’s citizens how to travel?
Absolutely not. They can travel by helicopter if they like that. But please at their own cost and not at mine.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
It’s funny to see such comments from pilots who depend on this infrastructure…
Someone said something in an earlier post about trees and suchlikes. I know that I am of one of the rare breed of “luxury animals” who get paid for pursuing their hobby and who do somthing which, overall, is harmful for everyone and everything. Burning 1000 pounds of kerosene to fly one person from Stuttgart to Zürich (which is actually something we do all the time) and then another 1000 pounds to fly back empty is outright insane. I know it better, we know it better. But the infrastructure is there and there are people who can afford it and who don’t care the least about anything but themselves, so we do it. But it would not make me sad if this kind of flying would just disappear. For the benefit of our children and grandchildren.
Silvaire wrote:
My favorite urban US airport to make this point is Hawthorne, KHHR
Or Santa Monica… wait, what?
what_next wrote:
But it would not make me sad if this kind of flying would just disappear. For the benefit of our children and grandchildren.
Would it be fair to say that your only interest in flying is to make a living doing something you disrespect, that owner-flown light aircraft are of no interest, and that your view of an ideal future is no private aviation at all? A Soviet style view of aviation, in other words?
That’s not what what_next wrote. Any intelligent person who is interested in the planet surviving us – for our children – has to admit that we will not be able to afford the extremes he described forever.
Yes, a person can even be critical about the things he enjoys. It’s more “Soviet Style” to discourage people from thinking.
dylan_22 wrote:
Any intelligent person who is interested in the planet surviving us – for our children – has to admit that we will not be able to afford the extremes he described forever.
I think otherwise 
Keeping far from personal attacks, I can’t help pointing out that the Soviet Union had a quite positive view of general aviation, even if it was quite different from other views perhaps more ego-centric. Since the demise of the Soviet Union and its state and sub-states, countless airstrips are decaying, countless An-2’s are rusting away, &c &c.
That said: I am taking my elder grand-son up for his maiden flight next August, and I fervently hope to pass onto him (and to his brothers) the enthusiasm of individual flight – in one form or another. The form may change, the dream must remain.
dylan_22 wrote:
That’s not what what_next wrote. Any intelligent person who is interested in the planet surviving us – for our children – has to admit that we will not be able to afford the extremes he described forever.
Sorry mate, but these ‘valiant’ and ‘righteous’ attempts to ‘change the world’ are far from connected to reality:
54 Ships = all cars pollution
Having worked at Air Forces Bases, Nuclear Power Plants and other gross destroyers of nature, I can easily tell you that flying your own airplane is the same as an ant farting with respect to polluting the world. There is nearly no effect at all.
The huge corporate structures, machines and war powers are what wreak havoc on our planet.
Not to mention the incredible miles of road and parking lot which cover so much of the earth’s surface, radiate heat and insert oil and similar chemicals into the water bodies.
I get tired of ignorant talk about ‘saving the planet’ when everybody misses the point because they’ve never seen how much waste there really is in just a few massive plants or vessels.
If you are a rich, entitled person, fine, keep flying to rich, entitled people in your space.
The reality is, I was born poor, worked like an animal for the last 15 years, have slowly come up, and have just enough to enjoy a nice advantage by flying an airplane from point A to point B faster and with less hassle than any other method.
No getting frisked in security, no lines, no lost luggage, no delays (per se) to business meetings, and longer weekends because I’m not stuck in traffic trying to make the normally 6 hour drive to Croatia, that is turned into a 12-16 hour disaster on holiday periods.
Europe has really lost the plot.
