I appreciate that it’s not just round the corner for you, but happy to offer a free space in my hangar. Could also provide a “dog walking” service if required. 
Haha! A dog walking service is what I am!!
Denham, presumably like most privately owned airfields, is run like a fiefdom and so I have never been entirely confident that my hangarage was secure and have always had a plan B. Luckily, I have this morning had it confirmed that plan B is still available to me but I will forever have a sour taste in my mouth from the way the owners of Denham treat customers. I know others have left voluntarily because of it.
I even know someone who lives next to the airfield who acquired a large plot of land for £1.00 with the proviso that it could never be sold to Denham’s owners and was sold just to spite them!
My suspicion is that it is indeed HQ who are driving other residents out with large monetary rewards for the airfield owners. That, unfortunately for some, is the capitalist world we live in and prosper from.
Thanks for the PMs offering ideas and support.
Landowners have always called the tune, and nowhere more so than in GA.
The airfield politics is the one thing which I find most depressing about aircraft ownership.
And from what I hear it is everywhere – in every country in Europe.
Unfortunately, GA is its worst enemy and enables airfield owners to take the p*ss pretty freely.
Most private aircraft owners are broke, or have loads of money, or something in between, but 99% won’t stick their hands in their pockets, always in the hope that the airport will be there for them for ever. That isn’t going to happen. In the UK, probably every GA airfield will be built over eventually. All have or will have property sharks circling around them. The only argument is when “eventually” will happen. Usually it happens when the current GA-supporting landowner dies, and the survivor receives an offer she can’t refuse.
When the handwash runs out in the hangar toilet, nobody refills it. When the bar of soap gets used up, nobody replaces it. Yet these people are flying planes worth £xxxxxx.
The only long term way forward is for GA pilots to stick their hands in their pockets and buy some hangar(s), freehold, or with long leases. I nearly succeeded in 2005 (~£240k for a hangar) but a crooked estate agent shafted me over, after all the contracts and surveys etc were done and paid for. That hangar could have held 6 TB20-sized planes (10m wingspan) and the rent, just covering the ground rent and rates, would have been £500/month (no VAT). So if 6 people bought it, it would have been about £40k each, and unlike a 40k plane it would have been an investment (perversely even more so if the place gets built over – this is another problem in GA property and this point is not lost on the people who own hangars!). But good luck finding 1 let alone 6 people with £200k-500k planes who will stick their hand in their pocket in order to secure a hangar for ever. Virtually impossible.
And this is despite the fact that if you have a hangar on which you can close the door and in which you can use a freelancer to do maintenance, that alone is worth a few k a year. And if you don’t maintain your own plane there, you can rent the space to somebody else, to do their Annual there, etc.
So we struggle from one crisis to the next, and always will.
Very sad.
Agreed – why don’t pilots and GA band together and buy airports/hangars etc? It’s time to pry our destiny out of the hands of people who either hate GA or are greedy sods.
It would seem that a famously rich Russian Oligarch is a player at Denham now……..
Isn’t Denham family owned?
My understanding was that it is owned by a Lady whose eldest daughter runs the airfield, and the other runs the flight school. I saw the old Lady a couple of years ago, flying solo her Piper Comanche (the twin version).
Yes, privately owned as you describe.
Money talks.
Abromovich’s money SCREAMS.
It seems that the judges opinion of the airfield owners is coincident with my own.
Does that have any bearing on your predicament?
Who knows? I’m just pleased that their arrogance has been recognised and dealt with by the court so everyone can see what they are dealing with when they enter into a relationship with Bickerton’s Aerodrome Ltd.
