Colin wrote:
The only possibility may be to bring back a small percentage of the staff that would be needed for private flying to start. For example not all Fire crew, Tower staff or Admin staff would be needed. Under this system I can see all sorts of new regulations being introduced by airports, as if there weren’t enough already. For example, PPR slot times to take off and arrive to be issued 24 hours in advance etc. I’m sure you can think of many more.
The obvious solution I can see is to go unlicensed for a period of time and put in self-service fuel/payment arrangements. You still won’t need any staff beyond grass cutting and fuel sampling.
Unfortunately there is a problem with going unlicensed on a part time basis. I don’t know the details but have heard it from several airport managers, including the late David Philips (who ran High Wycombe / Booker for a while) that the CAA dislikes this and makes your life difficult if you want to go licensed later.
Possibly this is because they lose the licensing income when you go unlicensed so they see it as cherry-picking.
Lots of GA airfields could go unlicensed for a part of the day and save money that way, while retaining the CAA’s protection from the proverbial “landowner next door planting fast growing conifers at the end of your runway and making it useless to all but STOL aircraft”.
This was already posted here somewhere… the CAA has published its guidelines for getting back into flying “when it is allowed again” – here
Let me paraphrase the above… When you get back into flying, you have to make sure
We went flying on Wednesday afternoon (it was a really nice day).
The only stipulation is that the flight remain within Manx airspace (up to where our waters extend) – our borders remain closed and probably will remain closed for months. A-B flights are fine – we did one – although there aren’t many A-B flights you can do here :-) and that the flight be for “reasonable engine health/currency” rather than just a jolly. Ronaldsway’s class D actually got quite busy at one point while we were flying.
Unfortunately we’re probably only going to get one more flight in before our PtF runs out, but the time won’t be wasted, I have a number of more drawn out maintenance jobs I want to do which will be a lot more pleasant to do on a warm day in the sunshine (our hangar is off the grid and pretty breezy) than in the middle of winter when I’d normally do this stuff.
Do the Channel Islands fall under the same restrictions as the rest of the UK? Do they also require quarantine for people coming from the continent?
France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have announced full opening of their common borders per June 15. We’ll have to wait and see if that is really the case for GA too… but that could also open up the possibility of flying to Jersey or Guernsey for some who can’t otherwise reach it without a stop in France.
I spoke to Alderney yesterday. All three islands are shut to visitors, unless you live there, or fancy the 14 day lock-up. Alderney has had zero known infections but Jersey and Guernsey have had some and are now in control of them. No anticipated opening date.
The UK 14 day quarantine proposal for inbounds excludes all of Ireland, IOM and the Channel Islands.
Also France, apparently under threat from Mr Macron to do the same to Brits 
and I predict that all the rest of schengen will do the same, rendering an inbound quarantine impossible to do in the UK; this may be partly why they didn’t do one earlier (and got really criticised for allowing ~100k to come back from skiing and then another ~100k to come back after the lockdown) but nobody wants to admit that their arm had been twisted.
Peter wrote:
This was already posted here somewhere… the CAA has published its guidelines for getting back into flying “when it is allowed again” – hereLet me paraphrase the above… When you get back into flying, you have to make sure
you still have ya PPL and medical
your shoelaces are tied up so they don’t catch in the pedals
your flies are done up else you are gonna distract the instructor
etc
And along those lines, the CAA has also now published new guidance on avoiding airspace infringements:
http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP1840_Avoiding_Airspace_Infringments.pdf
https://www.bmaa.org/files/Covid_Guidance_GA_Recreational_Flying_15_May_2020.pdf
Looks like BMAA have issued the new DFT advice
I understand that LeTouquet (LFAT) is open now, lately only Lille (LFQQ) was staffed in north of France
https://www.lavoixdunord.fr/753264/article/2020-05-15/l-aeroport-du-touquet-rouvert-le-matin
