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Landing after closing time...

The big difference Europe vs. USA is the way airfields are financed: In the US aviation is much more seen as infrastructure and financed by government and fuel tax/sales and no controllers to pay. In Europe and especially in Germany there is a lot of discussions why communities have to pay big money to keep the airfield operative as all income from fuel sales , hangar rent and landing fees is mostly not enough to cover all costs. No wonder if you have to pay wages to the controllers as well. How could you argue when communities are short of money and need it for other projects that have more benefit for the bigger public. I see the main problem in the requirement of tower staff with its huge annual costs in case of full time professionals – which seems to be a must for IFR places. German glider and ultralight airfields are not accessible for real aircraft except emergency cases. The rest is named Verkehrslandeplatz with regular hours and Sonderlandeplatz that may be PPR only in times. Vic Sorry , late for posting.
Last Edited by vic at 24 Jun 12:01
vic
EDME

A few months ago I landed at EDKL a few minutes after the official closing time. I knew I was late, so I called them on the radio some 15 minutes before arrival, apologised and explained I had no closer place to divert to anyway, so they agreed to wait a few minutes extra.

LKBU (near Prague), Czech Republic

As far as I remember from flying from EHHV, you can land until sunset even if there is nobody at the tower.
They will ask you to pay the landing fees either in advance or the next morning.
The AIP states that the desk closes at 20:00 and that you would need a prior notice if arriving from abroad after 20:00.

EHLE

If the municipality has to pay 100k€ to repair the fuel station and because of that cannot repair the roof of the kindergarden, then I as a pilot and user of the airfield also have a problem justifying the existence of the airfield. We’ve had that case, the fuel station repair was required to keep the permission.

GA airfields have very little use to the general public and at the same time are the source of much annoyance. They can only exist when a balance is found and late arrivals/takeoff are something that really upsets the residents.

… that really upsets the residents.

I did some googling and a quick calculation regarding the USA vs. Europe comparison. The United States has almost the same density of airfields as Germany, approximately one per 700 square kilometres. But the population density in the US is only 32 inhabitants per square kilometre versus 220 in Germany. This means that every airfield on average will receive seven times as many noise (or other) complaints here compared to the United States and this is exactly what we see.

EDDS - Stuttgart

Well, that is like saying one person has a body temperature of 20°C and the other 56°C so in average a healthy 38°C. The US have very densely populated metropolitan areas and then vast areas that are mostly uninhabited. Germany is much more evenly populated. There is a big difference in noise tolerance between Europe and the USA. I used to work in San Jose in California which is the southern end of the silicon valley, i.e. a very densely populated area. The airport was next to the office and it had a lot of noisy traffic from stone aged aircraft like DC10 which cannot legally fly in Europe due to noise. It was pretty terrible but I was about the only person to complain

There is a big difference in noise tolerance between Europe and the USA.

With the exception of Concorde that was banned from most of the US (and thus from commercial success) on the grounds of it’s noise…

EDDS - Stuttgart

Well it was banned on the basis of it not being made by Boeing. Noise was the excuse.

EGTK Oxford

Maybe to give some more insight about airport opening times in Germany:

First the license for the aerodrome will usually contain some maximum opening times. Here the main objective is either noise or night if no runway lights are available. Often these are generous and no practical problem (06h loc to 22h loc at my home base with some additional exceptions).

Second the aerodrome operator publishes a subset of those maximum times as the actual opening times or he operates PPR. Extending these opening times up to the license limit is possible. It is only a matter of paying someone to do overtime. Charges vary by a wide margin from a tip to many hundred Euros per hour. In general smaller club airfields are cheaper then big airports.

A German official publication dating from the 1980s (it is not even a law) requires at least one person who can operate the fire extinguisher. Being on the radio is not required but in most cases this person will operate the AFIS.

So the current problem in Germany is how to land between the time the fire extinguisher operator goes home and the legal limit for noise reasons. Depending on your regional authority you can request special permissions but so far these are all local unpublished procedures not available to outsiders.

This is a long standing problem but in fact it is not a noise issue but a search and rescue issue. We would have to somehow prove that unmanned aerodromes are as save as the current solution in order to resolve this issue.

Finally there is no general line regarding aviation freedom over here. Germany for example is restrictive on the aerodromes. But once in the air for example the legal VFR weather limits are rather low and the airspace is free compared to many other countries.

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ

We would have to somehow prove that unmanned aerodromes are as save as the current solution in order to resolve this issue.

That one is easy – just compare stats to the US where there are thousands of unmanned fields.

Interestingly enough, the only crash that nobody noticed there happened last (?) year at a big airport with ATC and all (it was the guy flying a Cessna from Canada to the US and crash-landed in dense fog, cannot remember the place now).

But once in the air for example the legal VFR weather limits are rather low and the airspace is free compared to many other countries.

I’d agree with that.

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