I’ve just been reading about Lasham Gliding Club’s legal challenge to the Farnborough airspace grab (a very worthwhile action BTW). The CAA approved the grab but the LGC has started a High Court action to reverse it. They have so far spent 200k on it and say they have no problems funding it.
They own the freehold of their 500 acre site and get considerable commercial property income from it.
There is a good number of obviously hugely wealthy clubs around. Lausanne was pretty amazing, for example. With the funds must come significant political influence, not least because politicians are likely to be among the members 
OTOH most others seem to be poor as rats…
I think that it is more a question of the clubs and societies being able to extract wealth from their membership.
A lot of pilots, particularly owners, are very wealthy (this is not to say that there aren’t many who are scrimping and saving, I am not saying that all pilots are wealthy, but a significant number are) but try suggesting that the club or organisation who are struggling to maintain their right to fly might put up their subscription by the cost of a curry and their wallets disappear like the dew in the morn.
My club is really big and it’s revenue is about 1.2M€ I think.
Nonetheless the club took a loan to refit all the radios and transponders. I guess they had too.
Like any club, if members were asked for a donation, not 10% of the club would donate I guess.
They have roughly 2000 members with a large proportion of owners, the maths will be easy? Probably more than AOPA UK?
Also, it is one of few succesful gliding clubs run as business, so they probably had budgeted for a long time for airspace challenges?
Most ‘clubs’ are not clubs as such and not owned by the members.
I don’t really think money has much to do with influence. It’s more about relations and creating a positive image outward and in the local community. Politicians need to project positivity or they are gone at the next election. (Which basically is what’s wrong with EU, no connection between politicians and the people, but that’s another story).
LeSving wrote:
I don’t really think money has much to do with influence. It’s more about relations and creating a positive image outward and in the local community.
But that’s not much good if the decision makers are not in the local community.
If, as in our case, decisions are made in Cologne, Brussels and Strasbourg, then at the very least you have to pay for travel and hotel costs to be there to foster relations and create a positive image with the decision makers.
If, as in the Farnborough situation, it needs to go to court then money becomes of the essence. (The CAA knew that they would get a Judicial Review whichever way the decision went, so they were enormously careful to ensure that procedure would be followed, so I would be surprised if a JR were successful.)
I’m a member of what was a wealthy aeroclub. They bought a factory-new plane, and renovated the club house a few years ago… now they’re a poor club
A commercial ‘club’ would obviously have profits drawn out by the owners, but a collective association can keep costs lower and retain profits for reinvestment. In this case they had a €200,000 sat in the bank: especially with low interest rates it’s better spent on enlargement or improvement. One thing they do is self-insure the aircraft: it’s more economical in the long run to put a bit of money into savings every flight, rather than paying an insurance company where you only get the money back if you make a claim. This assumes there’s enough to buy a new plane
I don’t know all the details but I believe the proposed Farnborough airspace would essentially kill Lasham as it would be too low to easily launch gliders: it’s self preservation on their part. I think they also had a campaign for donations specific to this issue. TAG will have deeper pockets though…
What constantly amazes me is how many people in GA do have significant money yet they are willing to do nothing to improve their place.
That is perhaps one of the bigger distinguishing factors between airfields which are nicely maintained and the rest.
For example if one person there has a TBM, he could have the runway resurfaced for the cost of an engine overhaul.
Peter wrote:
For example if one person there has a TBM, he could have the runway resurfaced for the cost of an engine overhaul.
One thing I’ve noticed about most of the very wealthy is they didn’t get to be very wealthy by spending money. Everything peripheral must have a return on investment. If the cost of resurfacing the runway is greater than the maintenance issues not resurfacing it causes (and the returns on investment on the money not spent on the runway is taken into account here), then the money is better invested somewhere else where it will make a better return.
There’s also the issue that the very wealthy person might own the TBM, but they don’t own the airfield, so they are improving someone else’s property at their own expense.
