Unless Peter or Emir know a better place in Croatia ;).
I know a place but we still struggle to re-establish the airfield there – ex USAF/RAF airfield on the Island of Vis 
It’s just below these clouds
Behind this restaurant
The airfield
I was told that the golf course and villas and runway were all built by someone from the US called Polanski, they sold the properties without selling the land that they sat on and this was the start of the problems, there were signs everywhere warning everyone against buying anything.
Other than that it would have been a good opportunity to build a number of villas with hangers and a runway and still could be if you were a local and could handle the Spanish bureaucracy.
I am sure @aart can input on this but I would think in Spain you can now get a good legal title, assuming it is possible to buy it at all. The days of crooked estate deals should be over. Well, cash is still used, I am told, but that’s a separate issue, and Spain is not the only place in “S” Europe for that
OTOH Spain in 1981 was a different place to today, in so many ways. A formula which might have worked in 1981… That bit of Spain has quite possibly not changed, simply because almost nobody wants to live there, so where would you fly to from your runway?
Behind this restaurant
Presumably somebody needs to buy all that land and get permission for the change of use?
It’s a really beautiful place to hang out and IMHO much more so than the Cortijo Grande spot where there is basically nothing to do, the locals will not want you there options for integrating into the local community are gonna be tough, and in the summer you can fry the fish and chips on the patio 
And you can fly to so many nice places from there.
skydriller wrote:
The only places there are “air parks” in Europe are where there are low population densities.
What is the logic of airparks? The only reason I can see is:
The third one is easily solved with a helicopter in most cases anyway. No need for airfields. This leaves only the second one. I don’t know. Personally I wouldn’t mind living at an airpark, or have a private strip in my “back yard”, but only if it didn’t complicate all the other things in life.
LeSving wrote:
What is the logic of airparks?
I don’t understand that a pilot wouldn’t understand – the attraction is that you have your plane in a huge garage at home, can work on it there and taxi it from there to the runway and fly on a moments notice. I also don’t understand why a pilot wouldn’t want to live near a runway (all that I know think that’s a great idea) or that living in chaparral (I see no desert) or local equivalent is undesirable. The demographic trend over the last 50 years has been is to move to drier places with less severe winter weather, and people incur much higher living costs to do it. In Europe there’s the problem that many of the places meeting that description have problems with government, and there is the fire issue, but other than that it’s mostly upside. The biggest issue over that period has been getting in before you’re priced out of the market.
It is unfortunate that some of the best places in Europe to build a residential airport for year round flying are the least politically friendly to the idea, negating what would otherwise be a beneficial trend for those areas. It’s their loss as well as a loss for prospective residents. Sardinia comes to mind (there’s ‘nobody’ there any more) although I prefer Corsica and would be on my way there now if it wasn’t for the current travel issues. I suppose if you had enough cash you could buy the whole island in Croatia
In Spain it takes a lot of persistence to beat the burocracy involved in getting a permit for an airfield, let alone an airpark, and no guarantee of success at all.
The owner of the field where I am located spent 5 years or so, battling with several institutions. Luckily he did not know in advance, else he would never have started And that’s in an area of Mallorca that is quite remote from any kind of town.
A friend living here has an estate on a large plot of land near Zaragoza in the middle of nowhere and wanted to make a simple strip for private use so he could commute there in his C172. Basically he got laughed off by the first of the many authorities he would have to get approval of.
A couple of identical threads merged.
@aart – this one is near Zaragoza. As I wrote, that pilot, a TB20 owner, died some years ago. He was a Spanish native so ought to have known “how to”. Your friend might be interested in finding out how this was done.
Again, I don’t want to go down the airpark discussion because we have a thread for it as IMHO it is a sufficiently different proposition in many respects, especially the level of political provocation, but history of failed projects has demonstrated that even really keen pilots don’t want to live right next to a runway unless they are pretty much the only users of it. I believe this is shown in the US also where most airparks are “strictly PPR”. Extend this to the non-airpark case, I am certain that anybody with the money, the determination and the personal organisation/motivation to pull this off will be looking for a nice location, and there is where the problem is.
The flying school thing is one aspect of how airparks are trying to make it pay. Selling houses is the other one. But the residents will hate flight training. Basically everybody hates flight training (flying circuits). I’ve been following the (failed) Murcia one since the start. Same with your own runway. You won’t want any training happening if you actually live there.
And the number of people who just want a runway and don’t care where it is, is very small. I could imagine an FAA DAR (= a person licensed to print money ) being happy to live in some god forsaken sun-bleached +45C hellhole and just keep flying out to jobs billed at 5k a pop, all over Europe, and do that for 20 years and then retire to Monaco
Silvaire wrote:
I don’t understand that a pilot wouldn’t understand – the attraction is that you have your plane in a huge garage at home, can work on it there and taxi it from there to the runway and fly on a moments notice. I also don’t understand why a pilot wouldn’t want to live near a runway
As long as the airfield is situated very close to a town or some central place, but they usually aren’t. And if they are, then the airfield is part of the infrastructure. It’s more like having your own stretch of railway. What I mean, airpark is a nice thought, but when adding reality into that thought, then suddenly it seems rather impractical and lonely.
Most airparks where I’ve been are communities themselves, but with like minded people, A&P IAs and builders groups included.
I think the “isolated“ thing may reflect European societies in a way that I wouldn’t readily understand. For example it’s always boggled my mind that some Italians don’t want to live even (say) two miles out of town, with property values to match, whereas that would be preference.I’d live on an air park in a heartbeat, given the chance (money/location)
I’d be at work in the day and be interested in the activities when I get home.
I could have a very simple easy access to fun flying in the evening and would relish having the Aerey at home with all the benefits that can bring.
Some people live near a thundering railway line and ‘never hear the trains’
I wouldn’t choose a railway but I would choose a runway.
10-15 homes and a small/medium hard runway is never going to make enough noise to cause the residents any issues, but what fun it would be to host fly-in days etc.
Sign me up.
