This has been raised many times over the years e.g. at Pontoise or Dinard (1 year delay to invoice) and more recently at Montpellier.
I have often wondered how much effort some airports in France must be putting into locating email addresses, and how much money they just write off – because there is no supervision on how much is recovered, so why should they bother. The local Chamber of Commerce will always make up the shortage 
In some cases they can perhaps locate emails (some incidental enquiry from a pilot) from a year ago, although I doubt that because few businesses are well enough organised to even keep emails for such an eternity.
Eurocontrol run a database of > 1999kg aircraft, for collecting their route charges, and may make this accessible (GDPR hahaha) but most GA is below that.
But often the general procedures there make it obvious that they won’t have contact details.
With some registrations they can find an address to send a letter to. With an N-reg it can be sent to the trust (which will send you a stroppy letter). With a G there is the G-INFO registry… and another letter. But even 1 letter will cost more in human salary costs than most landing fees.
Peter wrote:
Eurocontrol run a database of > 1999kg aircraft, for collecting their route charges, and may make this accessible (GDPR hahaha) but most GA is below that.
Also of smaller aircraft, since Eurocontrol is in charge of collecting terminal charges (not only route charges) for at least Germany and the Netherlands.
I have no idea how they track an aircraft owner down but they manage it somehow. In collecting the fees much will depend on the honesty/honour of the pilot owner. If they want to hide they probably can.
The CCI wont make up any loss as there is no loss to make up. The airfield has less money to keep open and to provide services.
My little steed must have secretly impregnated the ramp at Avignon LFMV because exactly 9 month later I received the bill. Before going to the aircraft a lady asked me to fill in contact data. It must have been far too efficient to use that occasion to make an invoice and have me pay on the spot.
Strange. Avignon LFMV is one of the places where you normally pay on departure.
Lately I have not needed to present the plane’s noise certificate in Germany like I used to. When I made a pit stop in Kassel the other day, I understood from the lady that she was connecting to some database, where she got all the details she needed from the plane’s registration. Right on the spot I did not think to inquire where she got her data from, but I’m probably flying through there again on saturday.
Terminal fees are also routinely sent after the fact to the registered owner now instead of collecting at the airport, and I have never had to give the adress.
So they do find us, even below 2t.
It would be a shame if someone cited the data protection act on them….
There are various legal defences to “GDPR” but anything is possible
The registry of F-xxxx aircraft is publicly available here:
https://immat.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/immat/servlet/aeronef_liste.html
You can even download the full list by following the “Données du registre” link…
https://immat.aviation-civile.gouv.fr/immat/servlet/static/upload/export.csv
No email, but the name of the owner + postal address is available. This is certainly questionable indeed in the times of GDPR. Does this database has equivalents in other countries?
FAA too, though most of the planes (the ones in Europe at least) are owned through trusts.
