Top 20 airports / most visited airports / how many different airports have you landed at

This thread encouraged me to look back through the log books and do some reminiscing on a much needed rainy day here in England.

I came up with a total of xxx airports, broken down by as follows. I have also included my favourite for each in the hope that it might inspire others to visit:

Switzerland – where I learned to fly in my mid 40s, 22 airfields:

• LSGK Saanen – *my favourite.* Jammed deep in a valley. Downwind leg for RWY 26 is 17000 ft AGL directly overhead the runway, then a right turn as the valley doglegs, course reversal over the town of Gstaad, “base” headed back north skimming over a hill with a railway station and then a very steep 6 degree final.
• LSGB Bex
• LSGG Geneva – then roughly clockwise from here
• LSGL Lausanne – a great, great GA airport for anyone arriving in Switzerland
• LSGY Yverdon
• LSGC Les Eplatures
• LSGN Neuchatel
• LSGE Ecuvillens
• LSZB Bern
• LSGT Gruyeres – beautiful setting between river and fortified town
• LSTA Raron
• LSGS Sion – my usual destination from the UK. Sunniest location in Switzerland but also the site of Europes most freaky IAP. It starts at 17,000ft.
• LFSB Basel
• LSZH Zurich
• LSPN Triengen
• LSPV Wangen Lachen – another beautiful setting, set into the edge of the lake
• LSZE Bad Ragaz
• LSZR Altenrhein St Gallen
• LSZS Samedan – St Moritz!
• LSPM Ambri
• LSZL Locarno
• LSZA Lugano

United Kingdom – where I have lived for the last 8 years, 43 airfields:

• Upper Harford – Home base!
• EGFA Aberporth – my favourite. A remote mixed civil and military airport. Only 3 minutes by taxi to a charming seaside village. Sheltered from the SW winds which beset most west coast British beaches. Then from N to S
• EGPE Inverness
• EGPN Dundee
• EGPH Edinburgh – first time I had the charming experience of being fleeced by Signature Handling
• EGPF Glasgow
• EGPI Islay
• EGNT Newcastle
• EGNV Durham
• EGNS Ronaldsway Isle of Man
• EGYJ Rufforth
• EGNM Leeds Bradford
• EGGP Liverpool
• EGNR Hawarden – see the Airbus Beluga transporter
• EGNX East Midlands
• EGOW Welshpool
• EGBO Wolverhampton
• EGBG Leicester
• EGBE Coventry
• EGSM Beccles
• EGBK Sywell
• Straughton
• EGSC Cambridge
• EGSU Duxford
• EGTC Cranfield
• EGBT Turweston
• EGTN Enstone
• EGBJ Gloucestershire – Britains greatest serious GA airport
• EGTK Oxford – with this one a close second
• EGSR Earles Colne
• Calcot Peak
• EGBP Kemble
• EGTW Oaksey – another great GA field with grass runways
• Charlton Park
• EGSX North Weald
• EGLD Denham – and take the tube to central London!
• EGKB Biggin Hill – who have declared war on light GA
• EGLK Blackbushe
• EGHA Compton Abbas – perhaps the most beautifully sited grass airstrip in Britain
• EGTU Dunkeswell
• EGTE Exeter
• EGHJ Bembridge
• EGHQ Newquay

France – did some training here over the years, xx airfields:

• LFBZ Biarritz

Buckerfan wrote:

Downwind leg for RWY 26 is 17000 ft AGL

Boy – that would make for a steep descent

My post above got cut off for some reason. Anyway I counted another 42 between Ireland, Austria, France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and the USA. So grand total of 97 at this point.

@Buckerfan is your post still cut off? If you email me the rest I can drop them back in. No reason why that should happen.

I lost the rest if it. I think it might be because I was posting as work in progress and and editing a number of times.

How do you guys make these maps? Whenever I input the ICAO codes into Google maps, it only finds some of them. The missing ones are not small grass fields (that’s prob90 a different can o’ worms…), but international airports.

172driver wrote:

How do you guys make these maps? Whenever I input the ICAO codes into Google maps, it only finds some of them. The missing ones are not small grass fields (that’s prob90 a different can o’ worms…), but international airports.

You’re giving us way too much credit ;-) the digital logbooks we are using do this automatically…

LFHNflightstudent wrote:

You’re giving us way too much credit ;-)

Hey, I always felt I was in the company of geniuses here, LOL !

172driver wrote:

How do you guys make these maps?

Figured it out. It’s not perfect (it put LPCS, Cascais, somewhere in Kansas….) but largely works. There’s also a way to import strips that don’t have an ICAO code by entering the place name. Again, needs some manual correction, but works pretty well. I’ll post the map once I’m done, here’s the procedure from Google:

• On your computer, sign in to My Maps.
• Open or create a map.
• In the map legend, click Add layer.
• Give the new layer a name.
• Under the new layer, click Import.
• Choose or upload the file or photos containing your info, then click Select.
• Map features are added automatically.

PS: edit to add: I created two .cvs files and two layers, one for the ICAO codes and another for the place names. Might get even better results by creating a layer per country.

Funnily enough it would not take much work to have a feature on the EuroGA airports database map whereby you upload a list of ICAO codes and it plots them as blobs in some colour.

Doing routes (joining up the dots) would be more work due to it needing to look neat…