gallois wrote:
@UdoR can I ask what your “another income” is which can subsidise a hard runway.
OK it’s an open secret anyhow. We use the hangar fees to subsidise airfield maintenance. Obviously there’s every 5 years eager discussion at my airfield because some of the hangar renters don’t see the point why we should subsidise the rest. We also quite generously subsidise our gliders and the junior pilots with the hangar fees. That support, however, is sadly shrinking rapidly. Our luck is that we just have so many hangars and people paying for the hangar that the income is quite ok for being a club. Other places don’t have that income. I’ve been to Coburg EDQC last weekend, a lovely airfield where we’ll be going again soon! But when I saw the super infrastructure in comparison to only so few hangar space available there’s no wonder landing fee is above 30 Euros.
My father who did the finances of our club for quite some time got his fingers on a good piece of land (in the name of the club) where he settled the idea to have enough space for hangars, and together they had quite good management so we have all hangar space rented out, still building more hangars (there’s still a lot of room left on that piece of land) and still have waiting lists. But we are really lucky in that we have that income (and mostly a good management over the time).
Aschaffenburg EDFC, the airfield in question, hugely benefits from the vicinity of Frankurt, Offenbach, Hanau, etc. Despite having a big numbers of hangars, they could rent out many more. It’s a much more pleasant airfield than Egelsbach, and both landings fees and fuel prices are significantly lower. I for one would also love to base at EDFC, but as Udo says, demand exceeds supply there.
That is all very special to this airfield. Other airfields aren’t in such a fortunate position, and location.
We don’t have a great deal of space for extra hangarage, sadly. Apart from 2 large hangars, one for the flying club the other for the gliding club, we have 4 very large hangars, 2 of which are maintenance and the other 2 have spaces to rent out. They are all privately owned so very little of the €150 per month for a space goes towards maintaining the field.
We do have some single and double aircraft hangars which are privately owned. There is space for about another 10 hangars but you would need to build it yourself. They will be leasehold and the owners will pay the town €400 pa for a single and €800 pa for a double. Much of this money under the present mayoral team will come back to the management association to plough back into the airfield maintenance. But a little maths will tell you that paying €40,000 for a fuel pump or worse €200,000 for repairing the tarmac runway doesn’t really compute and we are going to have to rely on the good grace of the town hall and the commune of communes.🙂
But thanks for the info it’s very helpful when it comes to evaluating our options.
One thing I find quite important for a good GA field is a proper website.
For some reason this often appears to be neglected, even though it’s likely the first and foremost thing newcomers will turn to for information.
IMHO a good website should provide the following data points in a clear, rather flat page structure:
- all key elements from the AIP (elevation, runway details, etc), ideally with a direct link to the actual AIP entries (if publicly available)
- opening times, contact details for on and off hours as well as “emergencies”
- fuel types available, along with any important details with regard to refueling
- parking and hangar spaces available, along with info on how to reserve one if necessary
- PPR and customs details, forms, etc.
- info on how to get in and out of the airport grounds during on and off hours
- info on things to be aware off with regard to approach and departure routes (airspace, terrain, wind, noise sensitive areas, etc.)
- sunrise / sunset times for today and any other date (easily selectable)
- webcam views, ideally in all important directions
- current wind, weather and forecast
- lots of good pictures to get an impression of what the field and surroundings look like
- sometimes: videos of example approaches and/or departures, especially if out-of-the-ordinary
- other facilities/features available, e.g. bike rental, car sharing, taxi stands, etc.
- info on how to best get around on the land side (into the next city, the beach, the castle, whatever)
- recommendations on hotels, restaurants, sites, etc.
One additional thing I rarely see and would find very important when running a field myself is an easy way for pilots/visitors to provide me with their feedback on anything.
Just put a simple form field somewhere prominent and encourage people to send you their thoughts on anything regarding the field.
This feedback should be very valuable in improving the visitor experience over time.
And of course:
The website should be nicely viewable and usable from a mobile device like a smartphone.
This is a requirement for pretty much all websites nowadays but all too often the sites of (even popular) GA airports are an absolute disaster in that and many other respects.
In general:
Don’t fall into the trap of letting the Wikipedia entry for your field be better that your own website… :)
@Mathias with the exception of webcams, most of what you desire is available in ForeFlight, at least in the top US version. Publishing entry / exit procedures is prob90 not the best idea. Here in the US, there usually is a placard at the gate (airside) with instructions, typically a code, 90% of the time one of the airport frequencies.
It’s funny to see how this thread develops.
If I get it correctly, this is an existing GA field which has fallen into some kind of disrepair or disuse and for which the goal is to create a
speed wrote:
Airclub of reference for General Aviation in Spain. A great destination for European flyers.
In the last 4 pages we get a full wish list of stuff including instrument approaches e.t.c. which are certainly desirable for some but MAJOR cost drivers. If they were to implement all that, in the end we would probably end up with landing and approach fees which make people frown.
You can’t have all that and still have an economical landing fee and “great GA field” unless you take into account commercial GA with biz jets and all that. And we all know what happens if you do that: Sooner rather than later some bean counter will figure out that 1 biz jet = 100 PA28’s and therefore tell the later to buzz off to those grass fields with rabbit holes e.t.c.
Question is, what do you really NEED on a field like this, given that it is in the Schengen space and given that most of it’s clientele will fly there/from there within a range of maybe 300-500 NM.
Hence, you need a good runway, good parking, Avgas/Mogas/JetA1, good connection to public transport and/or rental car or bicycle facilities and some form of a C-Office to take care of landing fees and general assistance. A plus will be a good watering hole and possibly rental income from e.g. a maintenance shop or similar which can sponsor the GA friendly infrastructure and landing fees.
The OP sais he will have a look at Portoroz and similar places in Croatia and elsewhere and I reckon that is the way to go.
Whether IFR is necessary in Spain depends on the climate, the further south the less so, where places are VMC 99% of the time. IFR most of the time implies also a controlled airfield with tower and so on, which translates quickly into $$$$$$$$$$ if there is not enough people to split the costs into.
Wishlists are easy to compile but the more you want, there is no free lunch to get it.
Spain can certainly do with some airfields which fulfill the aim the OP sets. So I wish them all the best of luck.
@Mooney_Driver I don’t share the opinion that the input here was like a wish list where all should be achieved.
It shows on the one side the very different needs from different pilots, which I believe is a good thing to know about. And on the other hand there are quite some topics that are clearly extractable that are very helpful.
We won’t see an ILS installation for a grass camping site 😉
@speed with some information about where that site is we could also shed some light on further aspects, like how to get to nearby tourist spots etc.
UdoR wrote:
We won’t see an ILS installation for a grass camping site 😉
Not an ILS but one never knows about RNAV approaches these days.
Here is an exemplary info section on an airport website
Here is an exemplary info section on an airport website
I couldn’t disagree more. Plenty of vague items. Lots of charges that should be just rolled into the landing fee.
And it fails my “Do I need a speedsheet to work out what I’ll need to pay?” test.
