MedEwok wrote:
In the age of GPS approaches, even an airport with instrument approaches would not necessarily need to be manned, but AFAIK most regulators see that differently.
172driver wrote:
Luckily not the FAA. There are plenty of non-towered airfields with a GPS approach here. Some even have – shock, horror! – CAT. From a European regulator’s viewpoint we should have mid-air collisions (no Flugleiter!) , burning wrecks on the ground (no fire cover ! Horror!) and generally airplanes falling out of the sky left, right and center. Strangely, that’s not the case…
The European regulator (EASA) doesn’t have any issues with private flights making instrument approaches to unmanned airports. Even DIY approaches are ok. What does the FAA think about that?
And doesn’t the EEA agreements say that Norway generally has to adopt EU regulations concerning the single European market?
No. The agreement work just as well without EU.
I think a lot of it is not to do with aviation regulations: some of it is down to local authority planning issues (in some areas, the local authority insists the airfield be open between certain hours), some of it is down to jobsworths running airfields (e.g. where the airfield could quite happily run at least sunrise to sunset, management insists that no one can fly in or out unless the office is open, or a huge long ‘indemnity’ is filled out and applied for 7 days in advance, by post!)
The airfields are often their own worst enemy.
alioth wrote:
The airfields are often their own worst enemy.
Yes, excellent summary!
I remember when I had to do the 150 nm navigation flight during PPL training and had to change the routing at short notice because one airfield did not allow take-off between 13.00 and 14.00 local time. One might think this had to do with noise pollution, but the field was in the middle of nowhere. Probably just a lunch break for the Flugleiter…
LeSving wrote:
The agreement work just as well without EU
That doesn’t make sense. The EEA agreement is between the EU and the EFTA countries.
Silvaire wrote:
In the US system many public airports are just a strip of asphalt, a row of hangars and a self serve fuel pump. No more and no less than actually needed, and not forced to be so by regulation.
The last phrase is the key qualification. In Europe, any sort of aviation infrastructure be it a fully-feature international airport or a private grass strip is loaded down by regulation, mostly in the name of “safety” but also partly by local resident pressures. Especially for light GA the costs are way out of proportion to the need, although the national aviation authorities don’t see it that way. For an international airport with significant airline traffic this is usually manageable up to a certain point. Lugano LSZA is an international airport and port of entry, as is Bern LSZB. Lugano has recently lost its last airline service and Bern is almost at the same point. So they are burdened with a huge regulatory load (that needs 76 people to care and feed) but only GA traffic left.
As a point of comparison, St Gallen Altenrhein LSZR is also an international airport and port of entry, but it is privately owned and operated by the same Austrian company that owns People’s Airline. It exists primarily to support a single route from St Gallen to Vienna (for Austrians who live just across the border). Since that line was stopped with the Corona border closure, they just closed the airport to all traffic under 3T and made it PPR for the rest at a jet operator price level (i.e. fees to cover the costs of bringing in staff to open the airport and service the flight …. ATC, fire-fighting, lights, customs, etc, etc, etc). Even in normal times, their fee structure is expensive for GA less than 3T. If Swiss pilots weren’t such aviation fanatics, GA would have been dead long ago.
alioth wrote:
I think a lot of it is not to do with aviation regulations
It depends on what you mean by “aviation regulations”. It has a lot to do with aviation regulations related to airport infrastructure and operation, imposing costs that are questionable for a lot of traffic. If an airport has one commercial operation, it needs an infrastructure that incurs costs that are recharged to all users, including those that don’t need it. And aviation regulators impose a lot of costs even to open and operate a private grass strip.
172driver wrote:
Luckily not the FAA. There are plenty of non-towered airfields with a GPS approach here. Some even have – shock, horror! – CAT. From a European regulator’s viewpoint we should have mid-air collisions (no Flugleiter!) , burning wrecks on the ground (no fire cover ! Horror!) and generally airplanes falling out of the sky left, right and center. Strangely, that’s not the case…
I think that pretty much hits the nail on the head. 
Sorry for multiple posts, but this is an interesting subject.
One difficulty with generalizing is the large aviation cultural and regulatory variation across the European landscape. Many things are done easily and often in some countries and are impossible in others for various reasons. The list of examples is long.
chflyer wrote:
One difficulty with generalizing is the large aviation cultural and regulatory variation across the European landscape. Many things are done easily and often in some countries and are impossible in others for various reasons. The list of examples is long.
Indeed! So maybe
In Europe, any sort of aviation infrastructure be it a fully-feature international airport or a private grass strip is loaded down by regulation, mostly in the name of “safety” but also partly by local resident pressures.
is overstating it a bit?
That doesn’t make sense. The EEA agreement is between the EU and the EFTA countries.
OK, yes. That’s correct. I was thinking EFTA, all the free trade and movements with nothing of the bureaucracy of EU. Too many acronyms. EEA is EØS in Norwegian.
But, you are still wrong. What the EEA agreement does is to transfer sovereignty to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) and the EFTA court regarding the rules of free trade etc. There is no law saying we have to adopt EU regulations. In fact, every single EU regulation has to be approved unanimously in parliament. Still, lots of people think the EEA agreement is fundamentally illegal according to the founding law in Norway. I don’t know. It seems to work well in practice, and we can get out of it with just a stroke of the pen.
