I understand Fraport’s way of dealing with GA but slot and parking coordination and charging each of these €40-50 per each activity is pure invention of handlers. And handlers operate under CAA umbrella which could regulate such practice and define what’s allowed and what’s not and what the maximum pricing is like AENA does in Spain.
Airborne_Again wrote:
The conditions put on the Greek government by the IMF and the EU led to this kind of agreements. You could argue that those conditions were criminal.
Absolutely.
Peter wrote:
Well, yes, but Greece borrowed too much and had its back to the wall on this (like on everything else).
The Greeks were conned into accepting the Euro and basically sold their country. And the winners came in to take the spoils.
Peter wrote:
One should be grateful they didn’t impose a flat rate of €1000 per landing and then spend the huge amount of money generated on buying another 3 submarines for the price of ten
That is a Stockholm Syndrome kind of reaction. For most GA, there is no difference between a €1000 landing fee and a €300 handling tax, both are outpricing. Anything over €100 for a stay is outpricing for most GA and when handling and landing cost more than the whole flight, it gets absurd.
Peter wrote:
Greece was lent way more than it could ever repay, because the lenders “knew that Germany would take care of it”.
Greece was paid upfront what eventually would turn out being a de facto sale. Germany had a large part in this knowing that what they labled “credit” in fact was investment into being able to take all the assets which can make a profit. In more than one way, the credit trap was a very clever way of a hostile take over. Not the first time this happens, in the corporate world it happens all the time that companies find that the creditors with the too good to be true conditions actually were financed by their competition who then call in the credits and either buy or destry their competitor.
One can call it criminal, one can call it economical expansional warfare or one can call it statecraft. The end result is the same.
Are you saying that all Greeks are idiots when it comes to economics?
As far as I can see the Greeks needed to borrow money to pay for a large state spend and a low tax intake.
Whether they would borrow in Euros or Drachma or Bitcoin didn’t matter as long as they had the money to cover their debts and to continue with state run services eg health. If they borrowed in Bitcoin they would never have seen the actual cash.
They could have returned to the Drachma and devalued it or do what India did and withdraw certain bank notes from circulation so that their banks ran short of money. But a devalued Drachma is not very useful when importing goods and services but very useful when it comes to tourists. Turkey built its tourist industry that way as to some extent did Italy many years ago. But the downside can come back to haunt politicians pretty quickly. I remember sterling being devalued, then there is Agentina, Germany between the wars when people used wheelbarrow full of Dm to buy a loaf of bread. Devaluation has proved on countless occasions to cause political instability which usually ends up with an extreme right wing or an extreme left wing Government.
Returning to the Greek situation. It was the Greek government decision to stay in the Euro.
It is quite correct to say they should never have been allowed to join in the first place.
It is without doubt that Greece had to borrow billions of euros. By being in the Euro they were able to borrow at a cheaper rate of interest than if they were outside. However, any lender or group of lenders has to do due diligence. They are not going to lend money if they are unlikely to get it back and so most loans come with conditions. The Greeks asked for a loan not a gift. They got a loan, now everyone here and in other places is blaming the lender for the problems the conditions in the loan has caused.
It seems to be a common trait these days, including with individuals that when they are not able to repay money they have borrowed that they blame the lender for making the loan in the first place.
gallois wrote:
It seems to be a common trait these days, including with individuals that when they are not able to repay money they have borrowed that they blame the lender for making the loan in the first place.
Actually the lender does have a moral (and in may cases also a legal) obligation to make reasonably sure that the borrower can repay. If not, the lender indeed is to blame for giving the loan in the first place.
I agree A_A but that’s what I meant by a lender setting conditions to a loan, so that he lender is covered. In this instance I suppose all possible lenders could have said “No” to a loan, but where would that have left Greece and it’s people?
gallois wrote:
Are you saying that all Greeks are idiots when it comes to economics?
If that is directed at me, not the Greeks per se but their then government thought they could get away with it. They also knew that by accepting the Euro, they got some sort of insurance against being dropped by Germany/the EU. So for them at the time it was the logical thing to do and for a government who wanted to get re-elected, they knew they could not get away with austerity measures prescribed by themselfs. They needed an outsider onto whom to put the blame.
At the same time, as @Airborne_Again rightly sais, the lenders knew darn well that by granting these enormeous credits, they could never expect them back. This makes their credit practice questionable. So unless we assume charity, the background was to basically take over the country or at least the worthy assets. In other words, a hostile take over of their economy. Whether the motivation is that THEY thought the Greeks idiots and incapable of running an economy and wanted to install themselves as a hegemonial power or whether it was pure Machtpolitik only they know.
Fact is that if a country, company or person takes credit both them and the lenders are responsible to check if that credit has any chance of being repaid. Anything else goes in to the direction of a snowball scheme where credits are repaid with even larger credits until the whole thing collapses. Which it promptly did.
So do I assume Germany knew what they were doing when granting these credits? Did they have the intention of picking up the raisins in the cake as a consequence, as they did in the Fraport case? My opinion is hell yea. And in the end the scenario happed pretty much like intended with the difference that the Greek then government never expected them to actually ask something in return. Well, they were wrong.
I have to admit that my pity for this kind of government has limits. Rightfully they were kicked out. But their scheme of blaming someone else worked. Only that they had to find out what happens when you sign up for a credit with sharks. Those have pearly white teeth and they will come for you.
So what would you have done in their situation, meaning the Greek government?
There are many angles on this.
The “lender is responsible” position is a good “modern moral” one but is also very much a N European one, where society works hard, generates a pile of money, pays a lot of tax and can afford to set up consumer protection structures under which “stupid” people can get compensation by the govt (read: the other taxpayers) for their own stupidity. Anywhere else in the world, if you have a €10/week income but are stupid enough to borrow €100k, people will just laugh at you.
In the case of Greece, everybody (Greece and the lenders and everybody in Brussels) knew the money would never be repaid. Greece was thus fully supported in producing the fake economic figures to qualify for the Euro entry. This was “ok” because most other countries were doing the same at other times, although on nowhere near the same scale (“fudges” were common and even Germany did some). The objective was the expansion of the European project and the Euro project and any price was ok, and if Greece turned into a disaster then either (a) it could be rescued (it was small enough for that, unlike say Italy) or (b) it could be thrown to the lions (which is more or less what was done) and a country so small would not have dragged down the rest of the EU.
Cynicism all around…
The wider issue is that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life, as the old saying goes, but much of Europe could never be taught to fish, and everybody familiar with Europe knew that. Decades of post-WW2 dysfunctional governments, dysfunctional tax collection, widespread tax evasion, corruption from the very top to the very bottom. And everybody in N Europe selling to say Greece was in on the game. Back home, all “super clean”, but in export “anything goes”. The expansion of the European project involved giving the South a huge fish, knowing that when that fish gets eaten there will be famine. Well, not literally famine, but things will inevitably revert to how they were before they got the fish, because there is only so much productivity to support each country. S Europe would never become an economic powerhouse like Germany.
What Brussels did to Greece with the imposed Fraport “deal” is just a little microcosm of the bigger picture.
So what would you have done in their situation, meaning the Greek government?
I would have reverted to the Drachma. Would have helped tourism enormously; currently Turkey is doing well out of Greece being in the EU and being 2x the price of Turkey as a result. Would have also hugely boosted Greek export businesses (not many there, but every bit helps). Imports would have risen in price and that is why the public did not want this; no more nice cars etc.
Rumours were going around that De La Rue (the banknote printer) printed a whole warehouse full of them in the UK, just in case 
The bottom line is that if the Greeks could manage the airports properly, they would be expensive but they would work smoothly. Now they are expensive but are not working smoothly. Fraport have recruited the least capable and the most obnoxious people they possibly could find in the locality. Greece definitely did not get “German management”.
Spot on Peter.
or of course do what the Bulgarians die when they got offered the same Ponzi Scheme: Politely decline to become part of the Euro in the first place.
I agree. If they had reverted to the Drachma and just told Berlin Brussels that they will get repaid in the devaluated currency or even threatened to do so in a convincing way they could not have been economically conquered the way they did.
But of course your point is very correct. The level of bureaucracy and incompetence is staggering and it is a pity to see how the really nice and lovely people there have to put up with it. I don’t know if anyone has ever tried to pay a parking fine there…. I tried. It took a full day and it was obvious that nobody, least of all the police, expected me to do that but to hand it to the rental car company who would once a year pay up and of course charge the client a nice service fee for it. At the end, the policemen managed to sort it out including a receipt, following which the ouzo bottle was produced such as to celebrate the occasion. Cute but not really to the point…
If you see how the airports are run, with their opening hours, red tape and all that, no wonder they can not accomodate anyone. If you only open up the airfield with a full contingent of people enough for a 737 but won’t allow GA to land despite the fact that the tower is crewed and the fire brigade is also on site but the passenger security and others are not, what more needs to be said. Fraport on the other hand have never had time for GA either. And to be honest, why should they. GA can take care of itself. But it requires someone to let it.
@petakas: Thank you for the link and suggestions. I will take a deep dive into it. I think it’s just sad that Greece is not as easygoing as Croatia for example. It really needs a lot of preparation (and money), instead of just flying towards any desired destination spontaneously, which works out in the most EU-countries very well. Please don’t take it personally, I really appreciate your posts here on the forum and I’m convinced that Greece is a very beautiful country 
, it’s just that Greece is not quite inviting us pilots to come there. It’s not just like a cross-country flight from Poland to France, or from Austria to Norway, which is all quite straightforward.
