The linked “handbook of Business Aviation” is not that accurate. For example, apparently Ain Draham in Tunisia is 17nm from Portimao (on the south coast of Portugal), nearer than Faro at 31nm. I haven’t checked whether the lat/long are correct or what.
We use Jeppesen because despite all the niggles it is a format I can understand, and more importantly our professional pilots do too. On most business aircraft they are the only realistic option to display on the MFD.
Peter says, " The solution is to more or less run your own version of the AIP data which nobody is doing to do. Hence we get farcical situations where e.g. the main contact number for “operations” is the public one for Joe Public checking Easyjet airline departure times "
Now you know why handlers flourish in Euro land.
A European US-style “AFD” would be nice but there are lots of free resources – example – which may not be accurate but they have contact numbers which are to some degree accurate and you can phone them up. If you fly something pricey you just phone the handling agent and he sorts you out in an instant.
I use Navbox Pro for this purpose. It has pretty good airport data. Probably from the AIPs (though it does seem to contain some email addresses which are not in the AIPs) and it seems to work. It covers all of political Europe and the one-off updates are very cheap.
Also most pilots don’t fly internationally so they can use domestic airport guides, like UK’s Pooleys (£20) which I buy every couple of years. I think every GA-busy country in Europe has its own version of this, so the market is very fragmented.
Plus you have so many languages. Europe may be one land mass but culturally it is a mix of very different places.
Europe as a whole is such a mess organisationally that it is a good idea to phone the airport to check. In the USA, for a start, most places are H24 so the major European issue is removed.
It would be great if we could create a European Aerodrome facility Directory (IFR/VFR) and having standardized Approach plates. The technology is there the political context and requirements and hence regulation isn’t…. I am afraid it will take years…we are stuck with Annex 15 for the time being.
As long this is not solved Jepp and Lido have the market…
Again it all boils down to:
IFR, Jepp tends to be good quality
VFR, they are often wrong/incomplete/out of date, and the AIP is often more accurate/complete.
Jepp is fairly often out of date. I once had an unpleasant phone call with Lahr tower, they moved a VRP from the east side of the CTR to the west side of the CTR without renaming it (which is in itself a stupid idea), and I used up to date Jepp charts which had the VRP still at its old location and obviously this lead to some misunderstandings, and caused us to cross the flight path of a helicopter fairly closely behind it, not a big deal for us because we saw it very clearly, but the tower guy must have had a heart attack. We then notified Jepp and after about 2 months, the chart was finally updated.
I had an issue with Jepp in Amsterdam.
I turned in a stand and within minutes some airport security vehicle arrived. The bloke told me me off for doing it and said it is clearly stated in the AIP Netherlands.
He said I must have old chart material and noted my licence number and my the update date on my jepp charts.
A few months later I had an update of jepp where exactly this was highlighted.
conspiracy theories
It would not be a “conspiracy” (which implies a criminal intent) – it would be just normal business practice.
There is a great deal in aviation which has hidden commercial constraints on it. For example most European CAAs run their VFR charts, and in the case of Germany the VFR approach charts also, as a profit making business. In the UK, the CAA licensed the VFR charts to an outfit called Memory Map. To some limited extent others have also obtained it (maybe from the CAA or maybe via MM – I don’t know) but the whole thing is very tight. They could easily deliver the data online, and it would be up to date, but they can’t as long as these commercial factors are in place.
I have told the UK CAA guy that he doesn’t need to license the topo data from Ordnance Survey (a very expensive UK former Govt department, and the usual reason given by the CAA for not publishing the charts freely) because the data is all open source / public stuff, but the CAA seemingly wants a rock solid litigation / due diligence backstop.
MM’s old QCT format was cracked a long time ago and MM then went to DRM (encrypted QCT) which has AFAIK not been cracked. People “crack” the charts (for general tablet etc use as a moving map) by capturing tiles and joining them up and then calibrating the result – either into the old QCT format or into Oziexplorer or similar. But this sort of activity makes the CAA even more nervous about going away from the paper delivery.
One could say these organisations have dug themselves a hole and now cannot get out of it, but we are where we are.
considering that Annex 4 recommends the charts to be in A5 format!
That’s an interesting find! 
If you think I am wide of the mark, speak to one of the national CAA chart product managers and watch his face carefully while you ask him why they don’t do the terminal charts in a nice A5 format like Jepps do
Generally I dislike conspiracy theories but there might be something to this one, considering that Annex 4 recommends the charts to be in A5 format!
Much of the source (AIP) data is of poor quality and has to be interpreted/redrafted
I would say that the main reason a redraft is needed is because the AIP terminal charts are intended for reference use, not operational use.
Much of the data Jepp publish is not found in the AIPs e.g. what they call “text pages”. Admittedly a lot of the resulting data is crap (e.g. airport telephone numbers which have never been checked) but Jepp have a big head start there. And if Jepp discover a mistake in the AIP, they have a commercial incentive to not get it corrected in the AIP – same goes for anybody producing commercial charts of any type
Most of the text data stuff comes from AIPs, ICAO SARPs and other official sources, but of course not everything.
Also PPL pilots are conditioned in training to use only the “official” (national CAA) chart no matter how crap it is.
Maybe in the UK. Sweden has two VFR manuals (one published by the national aeroclub and the Jepp one). No one uses VACs from the AIP. For enroute use the national aeroclub publishes 1:250 000 charts for the whole country, which most people use. There are also 1:500 000 published by the CAA.
I have made the opposite experience, for example fuel provider phone numbers missing from the Jepp text section, but there in the AIP and even correct. This was Spain, btw, which is probably as southern europe as it can get.
Paradoxically, Spain is one place where aviation runs in a “funny way” on the ground but the AIP is of good quality.
Why Jepp don’t pick up good data from the obvious place to look at first (the AIP) I have no idea. Clearly it is not a priority for them, probably because most of their business is the sort of aviation where the pilots don’t do their preflight stuff. It is done by dedicated people in OPS back at the base and they don’t use the Text Pages and/or can’t be bothered to tell Jepp of any errors.
Years ago I used to fly with the Jepp Bottlang VFR guides (which AFAICT have been replaced by the Jeppview VFR section now, and probably eventually the Ipad stuff like JeppFD-VFR will have it all transferred) and their inaccuracies were legendary further south. But then in VFR you should expect that since a miniscule % of PPLs fly internationally so errors aren’t going to get reported.
Getting a VFR flight planning product accurate across Europe, including places where there is little GA (much of Europe 
) is a huge long term effort and only the oldest contenders get anywhere near there.
