Latest IAOPA news

I agree about it being depressing.

However, nearly all PR material coming out of any AOPA is written to be depressing – it has to be because they need the paying membership. The only bits that are not depressing are those where they claim credit for some regulatory climbdown

And often they claim credit for stuff which was partly or even wholly done by somebody else

Private GA is almost nonexistent in most of Europe’s land area, especially southern Europe. So they struggle…

What can be done? I suppose more of the same that people are trying to do already i.e. keeping GA and its benefits in the public eye, in every way possible. Greece in particular has a huge and dead obvious economic case for GA (which is frankly almost nonexistent in most of Europe) yet it has very little of it.

The pattern is always the same. New anti-GA legislation is worked out “secretly”, taking extra care that GA groups will not have a clue until it is too late. This works particularly well in countries where GA (and AOPA) is comparatively small.

Fact is that a lot of European countries have been driving a relentless campaign against GA for decades. It has only been fairly recently and under the leadership of some very good people especcially at AOPA that a concentrated effort was directed against this trend, also and particularly EASA’s numerous tries to stifle GA. I’d say GA ows Martin Robinson and Michael Erb of AOPA UK and Germany respectively a huge debt of gratitude for their relentless strive to save GA from the bureaucrats and socialist driven assault it has been exposed to over the recent years.

The news are rather clear, I don’t know what AOPA should state differently. These things are facts and they need to be made known. AOPA are the only ones who make a concentrated effort to do so. Without them, most of us would not know about it. We all know that without AOPA USA, GA there would most probably be in the same war of extinction it faces in large parts of Europe, AOPA and IAOPA in fact is the ONLY coordinated lobby we have who can cross country borders and work internationally. I also do not see any other such organisation who has access into EASA the way they have worked to achieve recently.

The specific news items in the AOPA post are partly very serious indeed. Reykjavik airport is a major transit airport for the GA NATL ferry traffic. Were it to be closed or GA banned from it, a replacement would be absolutely necessary in order not to disrupt this activity. Iceland needs to be put under pressure accordingly, as it is not acceptable that they would close or hamper the single most important transit airport and virtually closing the North Atlantic for GA, not to speak of dislocating or anihilating their own GA based there.

Greece has always been a problem for GA, so the latest “initiative” by the Greek CAA totally disregarding the need of the Greek GA is no surprise.

The Finnish news are a severe blow indeed as Finland has a very active GA scene.

It is always astonishing to see just how far certain players are willing to go to exercise their pet hatred of GA. I can see this on my own homebase where local clubs and players basically have given up trying to safeguard GA against massive efforts by the airport to exterminate them, including a multi million Euro taxiway project which has no real use but will destroy the real estate of the local flying club as well as the rescue center, 2 FBO’s and Cessna’s Citation service. Most neutral commentators state the obvious: the new taxiway planned has NO other purpose than to pull a “Daley” on ZRH’s GA and to physically destroy their current infrastructure without offering any alternative housing or parking.

In that regard, the news posted in the AOPA briefings are not surprising at all. I also am of the opinion that they are far from being presented as “overly depressing in order to attract membership”. Whoever is active in GA and not an AOPA member will have to ask themselfs why European AOPA is struggling to finance their lobby work whereas AOPA USA has ample funds. Personally, I see a membership in AOPA in Europe for any GA supporter let alone active pilots as a question of honor.

I did not say the AOPAs do nothing, and lately it does look like there are good successes.

However I doubt any national CAA in “modern” Europe is out to kill off GA. After all, GA creates and supports many jobs in the regulatory bodies.

There are plenty of airport managers who want to drive out GA, but that’s a different problem. I suppose the problem there is with whoever appointed that manager. Local government? If you recruit and appoint an idiot to run a business, you will end up with an idiot running the business!

Try flying into Stockholm with your Avgas powered aircraft in IMC conditions and realise there’s no longer any fuel at Bromma, handling is at Grafair costing an arm and a leg and to all intents and purposes the airport is closed to anything less than a Gulfstream.
Our proud capital, very impressive indeed.

Oh, and apparently GA is such a difficult animal to handle with probably several takeoffs each month, that it won’t fit into the busy schedlue of commercial operations at Bromma, for which Arlanda airport was built in the sixties, and where they now have THREE runways that they don’t use…

Did that change in Bromma? I have been there last Summer and a couple of days ago I received an invoice with takeoff charges of 310 SEK = 30 EUR. That’s all I paid so far. When I was there, Avgas was available as self service and Jetfuel (which I need) was served by a truck.

Stockholm really seems to have abbandoned GA now. Looks even worse than places like Berlin, Munich and Amsterdam. And Sweden used to have a really active GA scene…

It’s unbelievable. In the previous years they also shutdown the few active GA airfields that were near Stockholm, including Barkarby.

But in Sweden as a whole I would still say that it’s quite GA friendly. Among the good things for domestic airplanes we have our national landing card system, which means that we can land free of charge at all airports that are part of the system, which almost all small fields are and also some of the larger H24 instrument Airports. We also have a free flight planning center that we can use for flights throughout Europe, just log on to their website and file your flightplan. They also assist with routings and weather by telephone and are extremely helpful.