Are we forcing airfields to close?

It's not the £10 that I care about.

It's the airports that charge between £80 to £500+VAT for an old 4-seater PA28 that are of huge concern.

No objection to paying £15, though my flying is closer to £70 an hour and there are people around here flying a C152 for £60 or so. On a 45 minute flight that does add up to a significant chunk of the costs, which is as it should be.

In the UK I don't have any major objections to paying £20 - £25 if you land at a place with full ATC at airfields like Cambridge, SouthEnd, Shoreham, Oxford etc. I did object to paying £40 odd plus to land at Norwich when they seemingly wanted to out price the core of the GA market from landing a few years back. Thankfully Norwich revised that trail of thought and the fees are more reasonable and the 'handling' is minimal and the facilities are good. That's fair. What doesn't seem fair is what I have read about places like Bristol main airport which is charging something in the regions of a few hundred £, or those places who force mandatory handling, when certainly in most national (not international) GA flights - it's not needed.

I guess we accept the £100 an hour (or more if renting) to fly as we as pilots get the total benefit. It's paying over the average for other people's benefit that is not so palatable.

Its not the landing fee or approach fees that are the killer is the cost of handling. I used to use East Midlands as part of a qualifying cross country route. It was 38 quid to land there. Alot yes but I felt it was worth paying as part of a students training. We also used the park at the flying school so the student would always get good support and advice. From January this year due to "security concerns" you now have to use a handling agent and the cost is now 138 quid for a Cessna 150.

For this extra cash you park 50 feet from the flying school not outside it . Yes you get free coffee but nothing else of any use so overall you get a worse service and a rip of Britain price.

So the outcome of this is we no longer visit EMA. Are they bothered well I very much doubt it. In fact I suspect they hide behind these "security concerns" to drive GA away.

I have looked at trying to use other regional sized airports and when you look at the amount of traffic some of them have you would of thought that they would be keen to attract any form of business but it would appear that's not the case.

Doncaster handling is 78 quid. Leeds similar. Teeside I simply will not use due to previous security problems (needed 2 forms of id cpl and id card driving license presented but not accepted. Insisted on paper part of driving licence. Thus not allowed airside).

Another large airfield wanted 24 hours ppr for training flights - WTF

so we now use Humberside whose landing fee is 35 quid with 50% off if a training flight.

So in my neck of the woods the problem is the handling charges not the landing fees.

I also wonder if it isn't some airport owners policy (Peel, sutton harbour, Bae) to drive business away so they will make a killing when they redevelop them.

I am responding again as I dont feel I addressed the original question. I would argue that pilots arent forcing airfields to close. If they close because they either cant or wont offer decent services for a decent fee, then thats maybe their issue - sad as it is to see an airfield close.

For example if a small grass strip charges you £20 and the price of a bacon roll is £5, well most people might go elsewhere instead of paying a 2nd visit. Similarly if one lands at Biggin Hill for £40 and thinks they will get a warm welcome, the most delicious Michellin 3 starred bacon roll one can find, but actually they offered no food at all (that was my experience a few years ago), there was PG tips instead of Earl Grey, then that isnt value for money (in my eyes) either, and I am unlikely to pay a 2nd visit unless I have to. On the other hand I have been to Shoreham and Oxford recently and both are fair prices for fair facilities, and they have nice food and facilities for GA visitors. There's plenty of interesting grass strips around charging extremely modest fees, giving you what feels like the red carpet treatment. I will go back to those airfields a again.

But actually, I think its councils closing airfields due to apparent housing requirements; the CAA possibly pricing out the affordability of maintaining a FIS or Nav/Com equipment (inlcuding A/G frequencies), or land owners seeing more profit from the sale of their land for housing or business, rather than GA.

But if an airport is capacity limited

It ain't. That's the problem. With the exception of a very small number of aerodromes, this is a complete myth propogated by anti-GA airport managers.

My view is that a lot of people need to "get real" and realise that say £20 is probably less than they spend on the taxi after they land, if they are actually going anywhere for a real purpose.

Which is not to say that I don't believe that taxis are a ripoff

The real problem appears when it's well over £20 (for a light single). Fees like £80-£100 do actually kill off traffic rapidly.

The landing fee amount issue has long been a topic of discussion and will never reach an agreed outcome. Airport owners will never make a profit off the land, and pilots will never want to pay what the runway is worth.

One of Canada's busiest airports, which has been open since the 1930's is set to close in a year or so. Hundreds of planes will be displaced, and there is not another airport to take them all. 20% of the planes will easily find another home, 70% will have a problem, and 10% are completely buggered for the Toronto area. The bottom line is that the airport owner, has sold the land for $195 million. Aviation sure is not going to pay that! The son of the aviation loving parents who started the airport, and subsidized it all those years, just does not like aviation that much! For a while, 20 years back, that airport implemented a $6 landing fee. I simply stopped going - I did not need to, there were other airports to fly to for lunch. They soon realized they were loosing more in lunch and fuel sales, and did away with the fee.

Toronto International applied a fee amounting to more than $100 for a light aircraft, simply to discourage such aircraft flying in at all. Though I did not like it, I do see the logic. I've not flown in there for 20 years (you could not buy lunch there anyway).

Brampton Flying Club, not far from Toronto, is the only flying club in Canada which owns its airport, it has for 50 years or so. Aside from encroaching development, it is otherwise safe as an airport (though they have had to move once before). Worst is they have to move again, but it will be move, not close - they have the money and the passion....

Very few airports in Ontario charge landing fees at all. There's no fee at my home airstrip, but then I had to pay for the property, build the runway, build the hanger, install the fuel pumps and runway lights, cut the grass, and blow the snow - so I figure it should be free for me.

It's nice to be able to fly from place to place, but there is a cost to all those places. I doubt that a $10 landing fee even puts a dent in it, when the airport has 10 arrivals a day. Airports are nearly a gift to us pilots, which we could never afford on our own. If someone asks a landing fee, I eagerly pay it, as it will probably assure the continued existence of that airport. We simply cannot afford the land we use, so we're not closing the airports, but we sure are doing little to keep them open either. There's a minimum critical mass necessary to keep an airport anywhere near profitable, and with declining aviation, we're getting farther away from it....