Hello everyone,
After some consultancy held earlier, I would like to ask you to fill the attached survey. The survey is about the pricing tendencies across European airports. Each of us can name the airports he is not flying to, as they are too expensive due to landing/ handling fees. But how severe the problem is? Is it country specific, or spreading across the whole Europe? Does it affect the way we fly, does it affect our safety?
These are the issues of importance for everyone flying any further distances.
Please fill the survey, it is just six questions long.
Let’s try to see where we are. Knowing better the scope of the problem it can help us finish this survey exercise with some interesting conclusions (I hope), but the first step is to learn more about the actual situation.
Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R8NBNSV
Thank you
Hello friends,
Till now 11 surveys filled, thank you.
Who did not attend – please give us 2 mins of your time, it will be great to have some broad, across countries picture of the issue.
Reminded me of when you could fly to Edinburgh, Dublin, Milano, Cannes etc and all reasonable and civilised, even Manchester!
Done. But what’s the purpose of the survey? Is it feeding into some GA representation or just to satisfy your own curiosity?
Hi dublinpilot,
Good question, however at this stage I can only answer that there is more than just curiosity. I have some plan regarding this survey, but let’s talk about it later, talking about it now could adversely affect the survey exercise.
Just 2 minutes needed to fill the survey, please give me just a few more days of answers coming.
So thank you very much for taking part, 27 responses till now.
I will keep collecting answers in the course of some next week, after that will present the results and tell you the idea behind it.
I think it may be interesting to present some midterm summary. Please see the below map. At this point we already have 42 surveys filled, so have a look at the geographical representation of the problematic places on the map of Europe.
Once someone was mentioning a particular airport (answering question no 3) – every such was counted, I grouped them on a country basis and these are the results. For sure on the basis of some 40 surveys we can’t seriously drag any conclusions yet, but well, some picture starts to emerge…
For those who did not take a survey yet – please do so: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/R8NBNSV
In few days I will update this map and in about a week – end of the survey and full disclosure of the results. I am pretty sure we will have some interesting material for discussion…
As promised, please find below summary of the survey, all together 59 of us decided to fill it. First goes the updated map showing the results of question no 3, than our answers for the questions.
The idea of the survey emerged from discussions here. We all know that there are issues with outrageous prices for GA in number of airports. But how big the problem is? What is the source of it?
I think we have the answers now, from quite a decent number of sixty of us.
Conclusions? Let’s talk… Mine are that we already have a huge, growing pain of fees. In some countries it is more severe, in other – looks that bit less. However for sure in the increasing number of places they simply do not want GA anymore.
But the airports are public infrastructure, often the only available within dozens/hundreds of kilometers, they are to serve all the users, period.
I would like to propose that we should sue few of them at national and EU level. To prepare the case against the first ones – it will take the most of our thinking, time and also money. But once winning the first cases (most probably on the basis of abuse of monopoly position) – the next ones should start behaving just being warned and seeing the real threat of won cases elsewhere.
In terms of financing of such an endeavor – let’s start the crowdfunding process! I think this shall work, a dedicated crowdfunding for cases against the airports that forgot their public role…
I think quite a number of aircraft owners and fellow pilots in Europe may be willing to donate some money for such an targeted idea, we should be able to collect enough to pay the lawyers. Once we manage to raise whatever is needed– we will start the case. If not – money go back to donators.
This will be some 2 – 3 years process, but there a good chances we will win at the end.
In my opinion it is high time to start a real fight for our access to the airports, otherwise we will wake up one day expelled from majority of places.
What do you think?
I think this is a great idea and I would donate €100 immediately just for a start.
It will work only with publicly owned airports, not privately owned (e.g. most of the UK ones) which can do what they like… unless you can go after more specific stuff like handling cartels.
I am in, but I also think AOPA should also be engaged on it, or at least informed.
I can also donate a few euros in support of the expenses.
Litigation is not a trivial exercise, especially if there hasn’t been input from a barrister (UK) who is in a position to advise whether the case has any chance of success.
Assume that the fees to generate a protocol letter, a good solicitor will not issue these frivolously, which puts the other party on notice of legal action and is a requirement for bringing a lawsuit, is likely to be in five figures. Bringing the actual case against a serious commercial operator is more like six figures plus.
Ideally I would hope AOPA and others focus on airspace grabs for under-utilised Class D.
