Flying commercially

Europe has very few airports with multi-day PPR and all the ones I know of are semi- or wholly-military (e.g. LGSA) or they are in bits of Europe which are still “developing” e.g. LATI.

In the USA this is not a significant issue because they have lots of land and the USA has a pro-GA attitude, whereas in Europe most airports are run not to support aviation but to make money and provide local jobs.

My point about contacting some place before flying there remains. If we did a EuroGA fly-in (hardly a world-scale event ) to Southampton EGHI that would close the airport to GA. You could close my base (Shoreham EGKA) with a decent size fly-in if most of them wanted hard parking. So while most PPR is just for stupid reasons, the argument in favour of not contacting an airport comes down to one’s attitude to getting diverted. I am sure if the car parks in a large city had online status pages, everybody would check them before driving there at busy times. Hey – there’s an idea – a status page for an airport

PPR on large airports is the most effective way to tell small GA to b***er off and keep them away. That is why it is done and it works pretty well for the airports. Most airline serving airports do NOT want VFR and slow IFR flights, they would love to exclude them altogether. With PPR with sometimes ridiculous pre-advice times of several days, they achieve that to a large extent. Personally I think airports which do that without any REAL reason should be prosecuted as they violate their status as infrastructure.

Unfortunately also many small airfields which are in private hands (which is probably the majority of airfields) seem to take the PPR option on board, either to make sure they do not exceed the movements the greens allow them or to exercise their power of ownership. Several airfields to not allow visiting airplanes or just a very small number, which make these airfields useless in the sense of infrastructure.

Why can the US do it and Europe not? The US looks at airports as infrastructure, Europe looks at large airports as an Airline only infrastructure and small airfields as a nuissance.

PPR is something which makes sense if there are specific conditions which require it. And of those there are not many. Whenever it is used however to keep airplanes away from the very infrastructure built for them, it should be contested.

boscomantico wrote:

When it happens, move a few aircraft around or get a bit creative with the parking order.

or send out a NOTAM.

Similarly, PPR for controlling apron capacity makes sense, unless you are happy to make a phone call before flying, or are happy to risk arriving and getting turned back because there are no spaces.

As pilots, I think we shouldn’t start repeating the nonsense propgated by “airport managements” and other burocrats. It will do us no good.

No space? Hardly ever happens. When it happens, move a few aircraft around or get a bit creative with the parking order.

That terrible burocrat-type inflexibility has got us where we are today (see the Biarritz disgrace as a prime example).

Peter wrote:

because PPR/PNR is nothing to do with safety.

PPR is really only of relevance at uncontrolled airfields, and at most places it is necessary to check if the field is flyable (no snow, grass is OK, no big rocks etc). Last weekend I flew to ENFA situated on an island on the coast, visiting a colleague who has a weekend house there. The runway itself is nice, 800 m asphalt and uncontrolled in G. It’s just that it also is used for motorsport. This weekend there is a race there, and there would be no way to land.

I would say it has very much to do with safety if the runway is in order or not.

PPR can be safety related but this boils down to a debate on who assesses the risk of landing somewhere.

Some types will get smashed up landing on surfaces which would be fine for a Maule with tundra tyres

No airfield owner is going to get into this because nobody wants to be responsible for somebody going into a pothole, etc.

Similarly, PPR for controlling apron capacity makes sense, unless you are happy to make a phone call before flying, or are happy to risk arriving and getting turned back because there are no spaces. A large % of pilots want to be able to fly and land without contacting the destination (and there have been virtually “hate campaigns” against PPR airfields, on some UK sites) but who wants to really take the risk? It works only with destinations big enough to park the whole of the USSR air force on just the GA apron (say Prague) or destinations which are so sleepy that you just know you can always go there (say, much of provincial France).

Obviously it does show a big difference in general attitude: anticipate every possible risk, plan everything ahead and then just execute your masterplan. The other approach is to have a good set of tools (aircraft, experience) and a general plan and then go for it and deal with issues (airport, weather, whatever) as they arise, based on the firm belief that things will work out somehow and there are always options. That is a personality thing and you can’t say that one is wrong and the other is right.

Nobody does one or the other. Every pilot does a mixture of both. You cannot just always execute a fixed plan, because of weather.

I don’t see myself in either category so I have no problem

Obviously it does show a big difference in general attitude: anticipate every possible risk, plan everything ahead and then just execute your masterplan. The other approach is to have a good set of tools (aircraft, experience) and a general plan and then go for it and deal with issues (airport, weather, whatever) as they arise, based on the firm belief that things will work out somehow and there are always options. That is a personality thing and you can’t say that one is wrong and the other is right.

Somebody in the first category might consider the other as “aggressive / ebullient” whereas he maybe is just pragmatic and confident in his self-perception or the perception of others?

PPR is more frequent at non-controlled fields, perhaps even non-towered so that none isp resent to refuse the landing. If not calling such a field before take-off, there is no way to detect the place is closed because (for example) the runway is water-logged (except in silly Belgium where they still use the old-fashioned signal square). And the result will be the same for a local pilot as for a foreigner, and it is unlikely to be a good result. So yes, PPR can be safety-related.

There are pilots who just fly, even when they don’t have the formally required PPR/slot etc. saying it will work somehow and if not, they come up with another solution.
And no, this is not a function of knowledge and experience because both types may have that. It’s a matter of personality…

I don’t mind somebody taking the p1ss out of me, but that’s nonsense, because PPR/PNR is nothing to do with safety.

The very worst that can happen to you is that you get refused the landing clearance, or maybe (during Aero Friedrichshafen in Germany) the destination will just stuff you by cancelling your flight plan.

Certain nationalities can take an “easy” point of view on this because (a) in their country there is no such thing as PPR (well, not at any airport which they can afford) or (b) the way their country works is that a local language speaker can get away with anything. Or they have inside info e.g. you can get into Bournemouth EGHH without getting PPR… presumably because ATC got fed up with so many cases of it. Unfortunately this cannot be transplanted to flying internationally. Try flying to Padova, Italy, or Corfu, Greece, and see what happens. Not many pilots will be writing about what happened afterwards on a forum