As I’m looking at houses right now in Los Angeles – and although they’re total bargains here compared to London, NY or San Francisco – they’re still insanely expensive. Which made me think – has anyone done a real comparison on these different scenarios:
Living in the country, or small town, where social services, public schools are good and where real estate is cheap and then commuting with a capable FIKI plane daily…
vs.
Living in the big city, or close to it in the expensive suburb, with the huge mortgage and the high social and high school costs etc.
For the inflated London real estate prices, I’m assuming living maybe 45min-1hr away by plane should make this a net savings, no? Obviously you need to have good communications, an airfield close by that has an approach and is open slightly later etc.
Would depend how far it is from your office to the airport and likewise at the other end. Also how flexible your work is in case of (for example) fog.
Yes that’s true JasonC. In the case of London, I could never find a way to get into center of town from any airport there that didn’t take at least 1 hr. But maybe there’s a way. So there’s that. That said, the train from Hastings where I have my house, into Charing Cross took 2hrs (2hrs for 55 miles – only in the UK) and cost £48 return for high peak. And people did that on a daily basis – 2hrs there, 2hrs back. And it’s not like Hastings is cheap anymore either. Cheap to me is a house that costs £100K.
So, let’s say you had a fast FIKI plane (180-200kts) and allotted 1hr to get into London town from, say Biggin Hill or Redhill or any airport with an instrument approach. Drawing a 150-200nm circle around London, you could then live in Isle of Man, North England, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland and have the same door to door travel time (provided you live really near the airport at the start end).
It’s an interesting thought experiment.
Be aware that if you NEED to be in an office or at a workplace by daily and you are commuting by plane you are putting yourself at a much higher risk. GA flying has weather constraints that no one can control and are more serious than the big planes can withstand.
The best scenario is to either be able to work from home on bad weather days so you don’t feel pressured to fly, or get an apartment or condo in the city you can use so you can fly and stay, then return home when the weather permits in both directions.
It is an interesting thought experiment, especially when considering the steep housing cost gradient around cities in Europe. Rome and Milano are two more examples where a very short trip by air could theoretically get you in a wonderful place to live for much lower cost.
Paso Robles and Temecula come to mind in your current circumstance, commuting to Van Nuys or Santa Monica maybe (?) Oxnard if you want a cooler climate and an IFR C150 Commuter commute, with train backup 
Clay Lacy was known for flying from Van Nuys into his Pine Mountain Lake house in a Lear Jet… Link
You must not forget: UK is extra-schengen. So you are limited in Airports when you fly from Belgium or other countries or you have to make an extra landing what means: extra time.
For the exercise, let’s take my situation, because I think I live in your thinking scenario and I made the trip this year.
So if you take the total time, it is even more than the 2h.
The guy who ran the outfit I learned to fly with did exactly that. Before running this little FTO/Aeroclub he worked downtown L.A. Both he and his wife loved the desert and had a house somewhere up there (don’t recall where anymore) and used to commute to KBUR (Burbank) every day. AFAIK he had some flex in his work schedule, which made this feasible. He flew an IR-equipped C172.
Vieke – Antwerp has the best airport ever for convenience. It’s right in town! Good points about Schengen, tho.
172d – I posted on another forum same thing and it turns out there are quite a few who does it or have done it here on regular basis in the US. I would think San Francisco with its insane housing prices, would be a prime candidate.
BTW you can use any UK airfield for foreign GA travel. The GAR form takes care of it. It is the rest of Europe which has the airport limitations 
AFAIK the airfield with the best connection to London is Redhill. Biggin Hill has poor connections – solved by getting a limo to collect the clients as they step out of the bizjet. I am very familiar with that, having diverted to Biggin many times for the ILS and paid the £100 taxi (their landing fee is reasonable at just below £30)… That is also why ( dog eat dog ) Biggin Hill objected to Redhill getting the planning application for a hard runway; Redhill already has ATC so GPS approaches would be relatively trivial and it would steal a lot of Biggin’s business because of the vastly better train connections and the close proximity of the A23/M23. Currently Redhill is grass so out of bounds to most “serious” travellers especially when there has been a lot of rain in which case you can’t even taxi because the plane has sunk into the ground. If I was in charge of Redhill I would focus on taking the planning appeal to the highest level – the payback would be BIG.
When it’s wet, one can land on Redhill’s runway 07/25, which has recently been widened a bit.
