Is being tight and slagging off airports a particularly British trait, in GA?

There are a few different elements to this.

You might be surprised about how financially tight some people operate. Some are literaly struggling to keep in the air. I’ve often noticed when I go flying, that there are people going flying (solo) and telling ATC that their flight details is “a 20 mintue flight to the west”. Give the location and access routes to my local airport, that basically means that they fly the outbound proceedure, turn around and fly the inbound proceedure. When I first heard this I thought “What’s the point in doing that?”. But I’ve heard it so often now, that I realise that that is simply all that some people can afford. So a landing fee that costs £18/€22 is probably a big consideration to them. Well actually, they’ll never get far enough to land somewhere else, but my point here is that there will always be at lot so people struggling with their flying budget. Human nature being what it is, people will complain if prices go up and it forces them to fly less.

Then there is the issue of price ‘jumps’. Inflation affects everything and the price of most things go up over time. But they generally go up slowly so that most never notice. But unattended airports, which rely on honesty boxes, or a lone person in the ‘tower’ probably aren’t going to get away with a landing fee of £10.50p. Handling the change is just too much hassle (and getting change from a bank or lodging coins, too expensive). So often such fees jump in £5/€5 lumps. They stay the same for years, and then make a 5 jump. People get annoyed because they see it as a big jump (£10 to £15 or £15 to £20 is a big jump % wise) but prices have to go up. It’s unfortunate that it’s really only practical to do this in bigger jumps for such places.

A big part of this issue probably comes down to the type of flying you do and where you do it. For example, if most of your flights are 2+ hours to somewhere for a weekend, then the differnce between a £10 and a £40 landing fee really don’t matter that much. In fact the location relative to your intended destination (the town/city/hotel) and the transport links is more important and likely to have a bigger financial effect! So you’ll think nothing of it. But if your flying mainly consists of a 1 hour round trip to somewhere local for lunch, then the landing fees can start to be come a significant part of the cost. Particularly so if you are someone who goes to the same place a lot. By way of example, a few years ago, coming back from Germany, I stopped in Exeter. I think it cost me £46 landing fee. Exeter suited my purposes that day as it allowed me to depart the UK without needing to give 12 hours notice and was open late in the evening. The £46 was money well spend, and wouldn’t even slightly put me off. It suited the purpose that day. But if I lived 30 minutes flight from Exeter, and was thinking of going for an hours flying at the weekend, and doing nothing more than eating at the airport cafe, I don’t think I’d choose somewhere that had such a large landing fee.

But at the end of the day, runing an airport like Bembridge is unlikely to be a profitable use of the land. I’m sure selling it to a developer for housing is probably an attractive option! So unless the owners can over their costs and get a small return, the airfield will be lost. Costs go up, so landing fees need to go up too otherwise we’ll have nowhere to fly to.

Peter wrote:

For example Shoreham (c. £30) is widely slagged off

I don’t mind the landing fee but what really gets my goat is their ridiculous demand that EVERYONE wears a Hi-Vis vest….. Pathetic….

I think what annoys me more than the £30 at Shoreham or the £20 at Bembridge (or whatever it is) are the fees at the large regional airports, especially in the UK, but elsewhere.

I suspect the fees are used as a device to keep most light singles and twins away, rather than a reflection of the actual cost, especially given that the cost is marginal anyway. I mean, how does Gatwick justify £750 with parking? Last time I was there, there were acres of ramp space, a couple of portacabins for handling (well not much more anyway), and at certains times of the day, hardly enough CAT to limit handling a small volume of GA with perhaps carefully managed slots.

I was in and out of Miami as but one example recently in a Cirrus and it was all of $50 including “free” nicely chilled cans of soda, water, and snacks, and naturally that included IFR departure and arrival, oh my goodness with radar vectors, and plenty of commercial traffic to co-ordinate, as I arrived at peak time. The facilities were better than Oxford’s GA terminal. There should be a cap on GA fees for all the larger regionals.

All credit to Southampton for providing a few parking spaces on the general ramp for GA without “costly” handling – it is still too expensive, but a good start. After all Lille manages very well as a typical regional airport, welcoming GA, and handling traffic through the “normal” crew channels clearly demonstrating that the extra cost is marginal.

£18 is about 20€. Enough to land at GA friendly international airports with over 2000 m hard runways and ILS in Germany such as Hannover EDDV or Münster-Osnabrück EDDG. Just sayin’…

Is slagging off other Forums a particularly British trait, in GA?

It’s not just here. PPRuNe is slagged on Flyer, Flyer and PPL/IR are slagged on here, it’s a bit sad really.

Peter wrote:

But IMHO it doesn’t matter because one can fly to Le Touquet in a similar time.